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COPyRrCHT DEPOSIT 






THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

AUG. 2 1901 

jl CoPvniQHT ENTRY 

' CLASS ft-XXa N». 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 

BY 

John Albee 



901 



Remembrances of Emerson 



BY 



JOHN ALBE^E, 

Author of "Prose Idyls," etc., etc. 



New York 

Robert G. Cooke, Publisher 

1901 



di'^itoi- 



TO 



EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 



Introduction 

I am indebted to Mr. E. W. Emerson for 
assistance in preparation of this book and for 
various illustrative note and comment. Without 
his approval and wish that it should be published 
I should not have ventured into print, and it is 
therefore fitting it should be dedicated to him. 

It is not a new valuation of Emerson but a 
narrative of his influence and its effects upon 
the thoughtful young men of his time. 
Neither does it concern itself much with per- 
sonal recollections of Emerson, save one excep- 
tion which may be pardoned to the adventurous 
spirit of youth. 

I call to remembrance simply the known an- 
nals of his life and work in their relation to my 
own generation. 

I make no claim to long or intimate personal 
acquaintance with Emerson. My elders and 



distinguished contemporaries were more fortu- 
nate than myself in this respect ; but nothing 
could prevent my sharing with them his lec- 
tures, his essays and poems and the general 
intellectual movement which acknowledged him 
as its leader By a sort of instinct, or whatever 
it may be called, 1 did not fail to become pos- 
sessed with the whole spirit and productions of 
that movement, and never supposed that be- 
cause I did not often share in his hospitalities I 
was any the less qualified to understand his 
pages or to consult his oracles in the difficult 
passages of life. 

I have spent most of my life at lanes' ends 
and country cross-roads where my opportunities 
for frequent association with those to whom my 
sympathies were drawn were much restricted. 
Yet there was an impalpable bond between us 
and an intelligence and communion conveyed 
by no tangible instruments, like the new teleg- 
raphy which sends a message by the invisible 
wires of space. 

Thus one comes to the belief that it is indiffer- 



ent where he dwells or what his fortune ; if he 
have any center in himself there is for him also 
a circumference with unnumbered radiating 
lines from one to the other, on whose paths all 
that toward which his nature most inclines may 
freely and prosperously pass. 

It has seemed to me therefore that with no 
personal assumption I might call what I have 
written Remembrances of Emerson. 



Contents 

A Day with Emerson .... i 

Emerson's Influence on the Young Men of 

his Time ...... 39 

Emerson as Essayist .... 95 



Remembrances of Emerson 



A DAY WITH EMERSON 

It is natural to wish for personal communica- 
tion with great men. We are drawn to them 
as to a finer climate. Young men seek them 
with an instinctive hope of receiving a direct 
gift which will brighten themselves with some 
beam of greatness ; older men divine that only 
so much as they take with them will they carry 
away. The confidence of youth is nobler if more 
inexperienced. In going to celebrated persons 
results of a singular sort are disclosed ; among 
them disappointment and mortification. Youth 
recognises enough of greatness to discover its 
own littleness. It finds that it cannot come very 
near the great man because as yet it has no orbit 
of its own. At a distance all is compensated by 
the imagination. At a distance we figure a 
magnificence in the presence and affairs of gen- 
ius. What chagrin to find that possibly it has 

3 



Remembrances of Emerson 

dirty hands and big feet, eats with a knife, with 
many uncomfortable manners to balk the predis- 
posed admirer. When its genius is predominant 
it retires to its adytum, whither we cannot fol- 
low ; we cannot surprise it in the act of being a 
genius ; we remain on the outside with its follies, 
or flattering equalities. We feel a shadow of 
regret to see the man whose pages suggest only 
the fairest ideals living subject to most of the 
vulgar conditions which torment mankind. Pru- 
dence hints that it would be wise to keep away. 
But we cannot ; we must embrace ; we must have 
speech with the being so like, so unlike, what 
we are. If we cannot approach the god on his 
mountain, we will catch him tending his sheep 
or frolicking on all-fours with his children. 

There was more congruity in the presence and 
conversation of Emerson with the ideal one nat- 
urally formed of him than we usually find in 
our personal intercourse with famous writers. 
I think this is partly the cause of the powerful 

4 



A Day with Emerson 

impression he made upon his contemporaries. 
His manner of life, the man himself, was at one 
with his thought ; his thought at one with its 
expression. There were no paradoxes, none of 
the supposed eccentricities of genius, to furnish 
the intolerable ana for future literary scavengers. 
He spoke of Nature not to add an elegant orna- 
ment to his pages; he lived near to her. In 
meeting him the disappointments if any there 
were, one found in himself. For he measured 
men so that they became aware of their own 
stature, not oppressively, but by a flashing, in- 
ward self -illumination, because he placed some- 
thing to their credit that could not stand the test 
of their own audit. 

The little contribution I wish to make to the 
Emerson memorabilia concerns a time so remote 
that I may be pardoned its personalities. It 
concerns a time which now seems like a dream ; 
and yet it was the time when a cherished dream 
of youth was fulfilled. It concerns a boy who 

5 



Remembrances of Emerson 

had never heard of Emerson until he read ' ' Rep- 
resentative Men" ; who could find none to tell 
him whether the book was by a living or dead 
writer, whether by an American or Englishman ; 
and in vain did he seek for some one who had 
read it and could sympathise with his own feel- 
ing in regard to it. Fortunately; for if that 
little Puritan community to which the boy be- 
longed had known Emerson he would have been 
anathema, and the boy's troubles would have 
begun prematurely. Communities and churches 
now claim the dead sage ; formerly they would 
not tolerate even those who read him in silence. 
How much we are changed before we change. 
How often we forget, forgive and at last praise 
what we once condemned. It became the fash- 
ion to listen to Emerson's lectures and to ask 
what they meant ; or to refer to some one who 
professed to understand them. The enchantment 
of his voice and presence moved nearly all audi- 
tors to a state of exaltation like fine music, and 

6 



A Day with Emerson 

like the effects of music it was a mood hard to 
retain. It needed a frequent repetition, and 
those who heard him oftenest, at length became 
imbued with the spirit of his teachings and could 
appropriate as much as belonged to them ; and 
some who doubtless carried away but little were 
self-pleased and thought they saw a new light. 
A small farmer of Concord told me proudly that 
he had heard every one of Emerson's lectures de- 
livered in that town ; and after a moment's hesi- 
tation he added, " And I understood 'em, too." 
I remember a day when I stood idly over a 
counter looking at the backs of what seemed to 
be newly published books. I drew out one, 
bound in plain, black muslin. Its title. Rep- 
resentative Men, attracted me, because I had 
just been reading Plutarch's Lives, and for the 
first time had been aroused by the reading of any 
book. Those Greek and Roman men moved my 
horizon some distance from its customary place. 
The titles of the books were at least cousins, 

7 



Remembrances of Emerson 

and I wondered if there had been any repre- 
sentative men since Epaminondas and Scipio. 
I opened the volume at the beginning, Uses 
of Great Men, and read a few pages, becoming 
more and more agitated, until I could read no 
more there. It was as if I had looked in a mir- 
ror for the first time, I turned around, fearful 
lest some one had observed what had happened 
to me ; for a complete revelation was opened in 
those few pages, and I was no longer the same 
being that had entered the shop. These were the 
words for which I had been hungering and wait- 
ing. This was the education I wanted — the mes- 
sage that made education possible and study profit- 
able, a foundation and not a perpetual scaffolding. 
These pages opened for me a path, and opened 
it through solid walls of ignorance and the limit- 
ing environment of a small country academy. 

All that is now far, far away, and seems, in- 
deed, an alien history; yet however much one 
may have wandered among famous books, it 



A Day with Emerson 

would be ungrateful not to remember the one 
book which was the talisman to all its fellows. 
The first work we read with an ardent mental 
awakening teaches us how to read and gives to 
us a power of divination in the choice of read- 
ing. One by one we grapple with these books, 
exhaust their first magical influence over us, and 
by these assimilations build up our own structure. 

I should be glad to read Emerson's volumes 
again for the first time ; I cannot recover the 
old sensation. I open them memorially. Per- 
chance, I may like the author I am reading bet- 
ter; but Emerson's generative power one recog- 
nises in many a successor. If you have lived in 
and through his volumes you never will be sati- 
ated while there is still in the world a good book 
to be read or to be written. They create an 
immortal appetite and expectation. 

I closed the volume of Representative Men 
and put it back in its place, but I could not leave 
it there, nor could I afford to purchase it. I 

9 



Remembrances of Emerson 

inquired the price. " Seventy-five cents," was 
the answer. That was a princely sum to the 
poor student who, to eke out his schooling, re- 
ceived just that amount per week for delivering 
a daily newspaper to sundry sub'^cribers. The 
glance the clerk gave my shabby coat indicated 
he had measured my poverty. I fingered the 
money reluctantly, yet not seeing any other copy 
of the book and fearing that if I lost this oppor- 
tunity I might never see it again, I could no 
more resist the inclination to possess it than to 
drink at a spring when thirsty. The true value 
of money depends upon that for which you ex- 
change it, as I have always found when it is ex- 
changed for a good book. If you draw a mark 
of equality between Representative Men and 
seventy-five cents you will see how much richer 
I was with the book than with the money. This 
was the first volume that I bought with my own 
money, and none since has educated me so much 
and none now pleases me so well to see with its 



A Day with Emerson 

broken back and bent corners, its general look 
of shabbiness, worn with much packing and 
travel, and its scribblings on the wide margins 
made in the days when I read it with ambitious 
zeal and began to feel wise and melancholy, and 
even to think I could piece out Emerson's sen- 
tences with reflections of my own. 

I read this book until I had drawn out as much 
as there was for me at that time. It seemed to 
be written for me. Youth is full of remarkable 
discoveries and affinities. Nothing looks its 
hoary age, nor hints to fresh young life that 
his is not a peculiar experience, but is merely 
one of the unnumbered coincidences in human 
existence ; otherwise we should be born old, or 
seeing the monotonous revolution should not 
wish to live. We begin with an enormous appe- 
tite for the spectacle, and soon wish to become 
a part of it. Everything solicits us to be an 
actor, even our dreams. I did not comprehend 
Representative Men in the sense of mastering 



Remembrances of Emerson 

the printed page ; but what one finds in books 
is not always a comprehension of them; it is 
sometimes provocation, the winged impulse 
toward the light, toward mental activity and 
self-expression and a communion with all that is 
strong and lovely. To this end some books 
seem to designate themselves with an especial 
character and emphasis. 

It was not long before other of Emerson's 
writings came to light ; and I cannot help re- 
marking here how an ingenuous and instinctive 
appetite is fated to find its congenial nutriment. 
What belongs to us is also seeking us. Emer- 
son was the prophet of young men, and his voice 
had the marvellous faculty of reaching them in 
the most obscure and unexpected places. Usu- 
ally this was followed by some sort of personal 
intercourse. The enterprise of young men is to 
possess the th^ng they love. Possession cools 
this ardor, and soon enough we care for the book 
rather than the author, when we can, unhindered 



A Day with Emerson 

by the intoxicating personality calmly weigh its 
work. I believe Emerson liked to meet those 
whom his books had reached and moved. He 
was always accessible and gracious. His man- 
ners — how shall one speak justly of them ! 
They were those of the finest women one has 
ever seen or heard, blended with those magnifi- 
cent moments in the lives of ancient sages and 
demigods which make the ideals of human 
intercourse. They were triumphant and just a 
little oppressive in their novelty until one had 
adjusted himself to them. His presence and 
conversation were a few more pages out of the 
essays on Heroism, Poetry, Love, Circles, and 
Great Men ; so that when you arrived at his door 
you entered the same house that you left behind 
in his books. 

After I had read in Emerson for some time I 
had the boldness to write to him and the good 
fortune to be answered. In my note I had solic- 
ited his opinion in regard to college education. 

13 



Remembrances of Emerson 

I will quote so much of his reply as is not per- 
sonal ; ' ' To a brave soul it really seems indiffer- 
ent whether its tuition is in or out of college. 
And yet I confess to a strong bias in favor of 
college. I think we cannot give ourselves too 
many advantages ; and he who goes to Cambridge 
has free the best of that kind. When he has seen 
their little all he will rate it very moderately be- 
side that which he brought thither. There are 
many things much better than a college ; an ex- 
ploring expedition if one could join it ; or the liv- 
ing with any great master in one's proper art ; but 
in the common run of opportunities and with no 
more than the common proportion of energy in 
ourselves, a college is safest, from its literary tone 
and from the access to books it gives — mainly 
that it introduces you to the best of your con- 
temporaries. But if you can easily come to Con- 
cord and spend an afternoon with me we could 
talk over the whole case by the river bank." 
I had not then the courage nor the opportunity 

14 



A Day with Emerson 

to accept his friendly invitation. But the next 
year, being not far from Concord, at the Phillips 
Academy of Andover, I thought the time had 
come. Life there had become insupportable; I 
was ready to abandon college education unless 
encouraged by some other arguments than those 
I could draw from the character of the prepara- 
tion. My only intimate at Andover, William 
T. Harris, the philosopher, had been able to 
escape betimes and left me without a compan- 
ion. Necessity compelled me to remain if I 
wished to go to college. While Harris was 
there we contrived, amid a crowd of youth in all 
stages of preparation for the ministry, to main- 
tain several starveling muses. With two flutes, 
a small telescope, much poetry and the begin- 
nings of that philosophy which Mr. Harris has 
since so splendidly fulfilled we nourished our 
aspirations and all the indefinable emotions of 
youth. We found or made tunes to many of 
Tennyson's lyrical poems and sang them in our 

15 



Remembrances of Emerson 

long walks together over the Andover hills, 
neglecting Homer and Virgil, whom we were 
not taught to read for any purpose save the drill 
in exceptions and construction. 

I had now a precise object and need of seeing 
Emerson, I thought he could advise me how 
to become educated and where. For the school 
offered nothing I craved. Its methods were 
brutal and monkish; its regimen, that is, its 
dormitories and commons-table had barely kept 
some thousands of dyspeptic alumni in this 
world (and had sent I know not how many to the 
other), and maintained thereby the chief bul- 
wark of a bad creed, a bad digestion. One of 
its disciples confessed to me that he got up in 
the morning a Unitarian but toward night the 
gnawing in his stomach brought him around to 
Orthodoxy. 

I therefore set out one damp day in May, 1852, 
in search of the oracle that was to answer my 
questions and who was to be the voice of destiny, 

16 



A Day with Emerson 

What trepidations and misgivings! The self- 
conscious student is thinking what sort of a 
figure he will cut ; he remembers his youth and 
its insignificance to any but himself; and the 
greatness of the great is vastly exaggerated by 
the comparison. It seemed to me I was going 
to speak with a man who like the person in 
Plutarch's story, only conversed with men one 
day in the year ; the remainder he spent with 
the nymphs and daemons ; and that day, for the 
current year, had been allotted to me. The 
fact that I went clandestinely, that Emerson's 
name and books were never mentioned nor 
known by any one in my world and that I was 
wholly unaware of the other members of his 
circle, called sometimes the Transcendentalists, 
or their works and influence, probably added a 
certain zest to the adventure. At the gate of 
the well-known walk it would have been easier 
to retreat than to enter. Such is the experience 
of those about to grasp what they have long 

17 



Remembrances of Emerson 

awaited and desired. I went on, however, as 
one in the end always does. I entered, and 
giving my name, was welcomed in a manner that 
at once banished embarrassment. 

Thoreau was already there. I think he had 
ended his experiment at Walden Pond some 
years before. Thoreau was dressed, I remem- 
ber, in a plain, neat suit of dark clothes, not 
quite black. He had a healthy, out-of-door ap- 
pearance, and looked like a respectable husband- 
man. He was rather silent; when he spoke, it 
was in either a critical or a witty vein. I did 
not know who or what he was ; and I find in my 
old diary of the day that I spelled his rare name 
phonetically, and heard afterward that he was a 
man who had been a hermit. I observed that 
he was much at home with Emerson ; and as he 
remained through the afternoon and evening, 
and I left him still at the fireside, he appeared 
to me to belong in some way to the household. 
I observed also that Emerson continually deferred 

i8 



A Day with Emerson 

to him and seemed to anticipate his view, pre- 
paring himself obviously for a quiet laugh at 
Thoreau's negative and biting criticisms, espe- 
cially in regard to education and educational 
institutions. He was clearly fond of Thoreau; 
but whether in a human way, or as an amuse- 
ment, I could not then make out. Dear, indeed, 
as I have since learned, was Thoreau to that 
household; where his memory is kept green, 
where Emerson's children still speak of him as 
their elder brother. In the evening Thoreau 
devoted himself wholly to the children and the 
parching of corn by the open fire. I think he 
made himself very entertaining to them. Emer- 
son was talking to me, and I was only conscious 
of Thoreau's presence as we are of those about 
us but not engaged with us. A very pretty 
picture remains in my memory of Thoreau lean- 
ing over the fire with a fair girl on either side, 
which somehow did not comport with the sub- 
sequent story I heard of his being a hermit. 

19 



Remembrances of Emerson 

Parched corn had for him a fascination beyond 
the prospect of something to eat. He says in 
one of his books that some dishes recommend 
themselves to our imaginations as well as pal- 
ates. " In parched corn, for instance, there is a 
manifest sympathy between the bursting seed and 
the more perfect developments of vegetable life. 
It is a perfect flower with its petals, like the 
Houstonia or anemone. On my warm hearth 
these cerealian blossoms expanded." 

I never saw Thoreau again until I heard him in 
Boston Music Hall deliver his impassioned eulogy 
on John Brown. Meantime the " Week on the 
Concord and Merrimac Rivers " had become 
one of my favorite books ; and I have atoned for 
my youthful and untimely want of recognition 
by bringing from my ocean beach a smooth 
pebble to his cairn at Walden. I gathered the 
stone in the ancient pharmaceutical manner, 
with the spell of one of Thoreau 's songs: 



A Day with Emerson 

" My sole employment 'tis and scrupulous care 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides ; 
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides." 

In the conversation of an afternoon and even- 
ing it is impossible to relate all that was said ; 
one thinks he never shall forget a word of such 
a memorable day ; "but at length it becomes over- 
laid in the chambers of the memory and only 
reappears when uncalled for. I find set down 
in my diary of the day two or three things which 
a thousand observers have remarked : that Emer- 
son spoke in a mild, peculiar manner, justifying 
the text of Thoreau, that you must be calm be- 
fore you can utter oracles ; that he often hesi- 
tated for a word, but it was the right one he 
waited for; that he sometimes expressed him- 
self mystically, and like a book. This meant, I 
suppose, that the style and subjects were novel 
to me, being then only used to the slang of school- 
boys and the magisterial manner of pedagogues. 
He seldom looked the person addressed in the 



Remembrances of Emerson 

eye, and rarely put direct questions. I fancy 
this was a part of his extreme delicacy of manner. 

As soon as I could I introduced the problem I 
came to propound — what course a young man 
must take to get the best kind of education. 
Emerson pleaded always for the college ; said 
he himself entered at fourteen. This aroused 
the wrath of Thoreau, who would not allow any 
good to the college course. And here it seemed 
to me Emerson said things on purpose to draw 
Thoreau's fire and to amuse himself. When the 
curriculum at Cambridge was alluded to, and 
Emerson casually remarked that most of the 
branches were taught there, Thoreau seized 
one of his opportunities and replied: "Yes, 
indeed, all the branches and none of the roots." 
At this Emerson laughed heartily. So without 
conclusions, or more light than the assertions of 
two representative men can give, I heard agi- 
tated for an hour my momentous question. 

At that period it seemed to me men acquired 



A Day with Emerson 

by mere industry whatever talents and position 
they possessed. Anybody could come to great- 
ness by persistent study and effort ; we were to 
be self-made men — that was the popular phrase 
of the time — regardless of whether the Creator 
had done little or nothing for us, and we were 
constantly reminded of Benjamin Franklin and 
that the way to the White House was always 
open to the sober and industrious young man. 
Sobriety and industry and frugality were the 
three commandments of the farm and the shop ; 
and if the boy left his father's field or bench for 
college or a profession he was enjoined to exem- 
plify these principles in the exercise of his intel- 
lectual faculties and functions as he had been 
trained to do at home. 

I was therefore somewhat confused in my no- 
tions regarding education by finding that Emer- 
son, who as I then believed had made himself 
a great man, was also college bred. Whether 
from desire to follow his example, or because I 

23 



Remembrances of Emerson 

was already nearly prepared for college, I found 
myself involuntarily coinciding with Emerson's 
views rather than Thoreau's whimsical opinions. 
Yet Thoreau had been to college ; but at some 
strange epoch in his life he had broken with 
his past and many of the traditions and conven- 
tions of his contemporaries. He had resolved to 
live according to Nature ; and had the usual 
desire to publish the fact and explain the pro- 
ceeding. It had never, however, the tone of 
apology ; and it is our good fortune that he was 
not too singularly great to feel the need of 
communicating himself to his kind. Never has 
any writer so identified himself with Nature 
and so constantly used it as the symbol of his 
interior life. It is sometimes difficult to distin- 
guish Thoreau from his companions, the woods, 
the woodchucks, and muskrats, the birds, the 
pond and the river. An inspired prescience 
foretold where to find the flower he wanted, 
and how to lure the little Musketaquid perch to 

24 



A Day with Emerson 

hivS hand. Rare plants bloomed when he arrived 
at their secret hiding-places as if they had made 
an appointment with him ; and the birds knew 
their lover's old cap and never mistook his tele- 
scope for a gun. In his intercourse with nature 
his pilot was some prophetic thought which led 
him by sure instinct to its sympathetic analogon 
in nature. It was natural, therefore, that to 
such a man systems of education should seem 
hindrances; they interposed another's will 
across the track of one's native intuitions. To 
shake off such substitutes with all their baggage 
was his prime intention. 

Emerson, on the contrary, wished for every 
help and advantage offered by the world of men, 
books and institutions ; he proposed indeed, that 
man should go alone, but not necessarily on all- 
fours or on the stilts of pedantry. He was 
to give himself all the available advantages in 
order to measure himself with them, and that 
he might not be dazzled or embarrassed by 

25 



Remembrances of Emerson 

illusions concerning them. He began with 
nature and ended with it ; between there should 
lay a long succession of studies and adventures 
which were to be included in his idea of culture. 
In his conversation with me, however, he spoke 
more of men and books than of nature. He 
commended Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments; 
also, J. St. John's volume on Greek Manners 
and Customs. Doubtless he conformed himself 
to his visitor and became a bit of a pedagogue. 
Then he talked of Chaucer with great enthusiasm, 
and recited some lines in a tone and modulation 
which rendered their music perfectly : 

' ' For him was lever have at his bedd.es heed 

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, 

Of Aristotle and his philosophye, 

Than robes riche, — 
********* 

And bisily gan for the soules pray 

Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye." 

What a fine, obsolete word is " scoleye;" and 
how much we need to get it back as an antidote 
to the vocabulary of college sports. 

26 



A Day with Emerson 

Emerson spoke of Plato also, saying that it 
was a great day in a man's life when he first 
read The Banquet. I was glad to hear him say 
that, because I knew there were such days, hav- 
ing had just one in my short life, and eagerly I 
heard there was a possibility of more. He 
brought forth some souvenirs of men and litera- 
ture ; among them a daguerreotype of Carlyle ; he 
spoke of his physiognomy, his heavy eyebrows 
and projecting base of the forehead, underset 
by the heavy lower jaw and lip, between which 
as between millstones, he said, every humbug 
was sure to be pulverised. The brow pierced 
it, the jowl crunched it. Emerson said, Chan- 
ning called his under lip, whapper-jawed. I 
asked him something about Carlyle 's manner 
of speech, remembering to have read somewhere 
of a peculiar refrain in his conversation. Then 
he good-naturedly imitated it for me. Emer- 
son was an excellent mimic when he chose to be. 
He said the conspicuous point in Carlyle 's style 

27 



Remembrances of Emerson 

was his strength of statement. I think at this 
date those critics who can never see but one ob- 
ject at a time, and whose chief insight is a com- 
parison of one creative gift with another, were 
still insisting that Emerson was only the adul- 
terated echo of Carlyle, In 1848 they received a 
broadside from Mr. J. R. Lowell's Fable for 
Critics, where he drew up in rather pedantic, 
antithetical form the resemblances and contrasts 
between Carlyle and Emerson. Mr. Lowell went 
on, however, to commit the same mistake in 
regard to supposed imitators of Emerson that 
already had been made in regard to Carlyle 's. 
Among Emerson's literary treasures he 
showed me a folio copy of Montaigne which had 
once belonged to the library of Joseph Bona- 
parte. It had a fine engraving of Montaigne; 
under it the scales and the motto, " Que scais- 
j'ef — What do I know? This I took to be the 
volume before Emerson when he wrote, " As I 
look at his effigy opposite the title-page, I seem 

28 



A Day with Emerson 

to hear him say, You may play old Poz, if you 
will; you may rail and exaggerate, I stand 
here for truth, and will not, for all the States, 
and churches, and revenues, and personal 
reputations of Europe, overstate the dry fact, 
as I see it ; I will rather mumble and prose 
about what I certainly know — my house and 
barn; my father, my wife and tenants; my old, 
lean, bald pate; my knives and forks; what 
meats I eat ; and what drinks I prefer ; and a 
hundred straws just as ridiculous — than I will 
write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance." 
Last he called me to look at the single paint- 
ing on the walls of his study, a copy of Angelo's 
Fates. We looked at it in silence. What had 
youth to do with those remorseless sisters? 
Youth would rather have chosen to ornament 
his chamber-study (rent one dollar per term) 
with pictures of Aphrodite and the Muses. As 
a matter of fact the poor student's walls had not 
even paper-hangings — only endless tapestries 

29 



Remembrances of Emerson 

of the unattainable. I amused myself in look- 
ing over the bookcases; and Emerson took 
down a volume which he requested me to read 
and keep for a year. It was George Herbert's 
poems. When I returned the book, mentioning 
my profitable hours with it, Emerson wrote me 
a welcome letter in which he said, alluding to 
Herbert, " I am glad you like these old books; 
or rather glad that you have 

" Eyes that the beam celestial view 
Which evermore makes all things new.". 

He went on to say, " There is a super-Cad- 
mean alphabet, which when one has once learned 
the character, he will find, as it were, secretly 
inscribed, look where he will, not only in books 
and temples but in all waste places and in the 
dust of the earth. Happy he who can read it, 
for he will never be lonely or thoughtless again. 
And yet there is a solid pleasure to find those 
who know and like the same thing, the authors, 
who have recorded their interpretation of the 

30 



A Day with Emerson 

legend, and better far the living friends who 
read as we do and compare notes with us. ' ' 

George Herbert recalls to me Emerson's re- 
miark in regard to the proper part of the day 
for study — that we must be Stoics in the morn- 
ing; that it would do to relax a little in the 
evening ; and his quoting in illustration a some- 
what Orphic proverb from George Herbert's 
" Jacula Prudentum," " In the morning, moun- 
tains ; in the evening, fountains. ' ' 

Besides these fragments of the hours I spent 
with Emerson, I find in my memoranda that he 
held a light opinion of things this side the 
water ; that we Americans are solemn on trifles 
and superficial in the weighty; that there is no 
American literature ;' Griswold says there is, but 
it is his merchandise — he keeps its shop. Had 
Emerson also forgotten the Rev. Cotton Mather's 
three hundred and eighty-two works? He said 
we needed some great poets, orators. He was 

' This was in 1852. 

31 



Remembrances of Emerson 

always looking out for them, and was sure the 
new generation of young men would contain 
some. Thoreau here remarked he had found 
one, in the woods, but it had feathers and had 
not been to Harvard College. Still it had a 
voice and an aerial inclination, which was pretty 
much all that was needed. " Let us cage it," 
said Emerson. " That is just the way the world 
always spoils its poets," responded Thoreau. 
Then Thoreau, as usual, had the last word; 
there was a laugh, in which for the first time 
he joined heartily, as the perquisite of the vic- 
tor". Then we went in to tea in right good hu- 
mor. I remember not much of the evening's 
talk. Probably my measure was full ; it was a 
peck, and here was a bushel. However, I have 
always felt that the silver cup somehow got into 
my tin)'- bag. 

In subsequent pages I shall endeavor to sum- 
marize and convey what Emerson was to the 
young men of my time. By a natural affinity 

32 



A Day with Emerson 

we who were his readers soon found each other. 
It^was under cover of a partial, general agree- 
ment that we allowed ourselves to feel that he 
spoke for young men and women; that he was 
their champion, in the fresh, mysterious impulses 
of a new day ; that he expressed what they were 
as yet only feeling, mingling poetry and philos- 
ophy in due proportions for their budding minds ; 
and that in personal intercourse with them he 
acted the part of a lover, intimating that they 
were the wisdom and the inspiration of all his 
thought ; deferring to them as superior persons 
more newly arrived from the empyrean; while, 
in truth, they were indebted to hiin for a cer- 
tain beautiful exaltation of purpose and conduct 
which fitted them to be his audience, and the 
object of his solicitude and admiration. Who- 
ever plants seeds and afterward enjoys the flower 
and fruit does not much remember his toil, so 
great is his joy, but gives the whole credit to the 
soil, to the sun and to the shower. 

33 



Remembrances of Emerson 

That Emerson was conscious of his relation to 
the youth of his time is shown in a letter to Eliza- 
beth Peabody in which he says, " My special 
parish is young men inquiring their way in life. " 

And to Carlyle he writes to the same effect : 
" As usual at this season of the year, I, in- 
corrigible spouting Yankee, am writing an ora- 
tion to deliver to the boys in one of the little 
country colleges nine days hence. (This was 
The Method of Nature, before the Society of 
the Adelphi, Waterville College, Maine, 1841). 
You will say I do not deserve the help of any 
Muse. Oh, if you knew how natural it is to me 
to run to these places. Besides, I am always 
lured by the hope of saying something which 
shall stick by the good boys." 

Emerson's attitude of expectancy and gener- 
ous recognition of the possibilities of youth 
were in part the source of his intellectual power. 
Not a descent through seven generations of 
clergymen gave it to him, but an ascent through 

34 



A Day with Emerson 

the long and broken lines of loftiest genius of 
all ages. 

" Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend: 
And being frank, she lends to those are free." 

Since the days of Socrates no young men have 
been more fortunate than those who came into 
the circle of his acquaintance and influence. 
There were others, older and more conservative, 
who wished to gather some marketable fruit 
from this elm. There were those who wished 
to subsidise him to some school, party, or sect. 
I think that Emerson knew his interlocutor, his 
man, very well. He had not packed your trunk, 
but he divined its contents. He did not resist 
too much ; he did not waste his force in vain 
disputation, but obeyed the Greek verse : 

" When to be wise is all in vain, be not wise at all." 

And it has been related that he went to bed 
to escape argument. He punished the Western 
men who pressed him too hard with question 

35 



Remembrances of Emerson 

and objection, by reporting that the St. Louis 
logicians rolled him in the mud ! 

He knew his man well. His kindness and tact 
were never at fault. Some one has related that 
calling on him, he fumbled about his room for — 
a ripe pear I Yes, he understood when to proffer 
pears and when ideas. The Pythian oracle' was 
ambiguous when the suppliant came upon a triv- 
ial errand. When men came only to have their 
fortunes told, or to know how their peddling 
would prosper, the response became confused 
and diminished. It did not know what to say. 
Then men accused it of obscurity and pre- 
varication. They silenced what should have 
silenced them. It is easy to be inspired at a no- 
ble demand. As long as there are sincere, earn- 
est seekers, so long will the oracles continue and 
continue divine. Emerson refused to dogmatise 
about what is necessarily obscure at present. So 
some thought the obscurity lay in him. 

To all that man has achieved, and to all 
36 



A Day with Emerson 

man's hopes, he was vividly responsive, and 
maintained no doubtful position. In poetry and 
nature, wherein he was greatest, it is to be con- 
sidered that the most perfect imaginative ex- 
pression is so identified with objects themselves 
as to share in their mystery, and to be capable 
of their own manifold interpretation. He dis- 
covered a new method of thinking about man 
and nature ; he endeavored to report what they 
said to him in their inmost being. Others 
have used them as symbols of life ; he tried to 
penetrate the symbol itself. This gave an 
elevation to his style, so that error was glad to 
be vanquished by so serene a voice, and to fall 
down without noise or commotion. 

" A gentle death did Falsehood die, 
Shot thro' and thro' with cunning words." 



37 



Emerson's Influence on the Young 
Men of his Time 



EMERSON'S INFLUENCE ON THE 
YOUNG MEN OF HIS TIME. 

The men whose youth fell in the decade pre- 
ceding the civil war and who read books, espe- 
cially poetry, were deeply moved on first reading 
Emerson. The feeling we then had and the 
manner in which we variously expressed it 
would even now, in the completion of his life 
and fame, seem exaggerated to the world as 
indeed it does to ourselves. Youth is the happy 
time when comparisons are not made, when we 
admire without criticism and are wholly pos- 
sessed by the spirit of imitation. There were 
very few of us who did not catch the style of 
his sentences and his ideas immediately became 
our own. They were reproduced on a hundred 
occasions and we experienced a deep, heartfelt 
pride in our superiority. Some endeavored to 
form their lives upon his ideals, not unsuccess- 

41 



Remembrances of Emerson 

fully ; others to dip their pens in his inkstand 
with the usual catastrophe. The ease with which 
his name lent itself to an adjective — Emerson- 
ian — was a great comfort and convenience to 
our critics; to define the term was more than 
they or we could do. When hurled at us we 
realised it meant something opprobrious; but 
when reading Emerson's books there was an 
exalted mood, a mental quickening, for which 
no epithet was good enough. Thus our defen- 
sive position was difficult to hold though we jus- 
tified ourselves in it, and we became more or 
less concealed and silent except with sympathis- 
ers. I was looked upon with suspicion by my 
friends when it became known that I was a 
reader of Emerson. I knew they were ignorant 
of the contents of his books ; yet I felt conscious 
of something not quite respectable and per- 
mitted. One learns later that innocent and sen- 
sitive persons can easily be made to feel guilty ; 
and in New England at least we had been made 

42 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

to believe so long that nearly everything which 
was agreeable was sinful that it had grown into 
a morbid sensibility to opinion. 

It was for many such prisoners that Emerson 
found a release. He freed us from the control 
of some ancient, theological tenets and led us 
to the simpler and still more ancient moral ele- 
ments of the universe. I think one of Emer- 
son's chief services to his countrymen is and 
will continue to be in disentangling the connec- 
tion between forms of religion and ethics; in 
once more planting prostrate man upon his feet 
and then uplifting his eyes to the spiritual beau- 
ties and dignities of life. No matter what his 
topic, he everywhere reaches that conclusion. 
There is this thread through his most illogical 
pages ; this central thought unifies his unarticu- 
lated sentences. In general it may be answered 
to literary objections that when Emerson is 
not a poet he is a prophet and as such is 
amenable only to the canons which govern deliv- 

43 



Remembrances of Emerson 

erances of that kind. It is perhaps too early to 
pronounce upon Emerson's place in letters. It 
is uncertain whether he belongs on the shelf 
with poets, prophets or moralists. When I 
read his poems he seems wholly poet ; and when 
I read Nature and the earlier essays he also 
seems a poet, escaped temporarily into prose. 
In these latter he keeps near unto the hedge of 
his " pleached garden " across which he con- 
stantly coquets with the Muse. 

As to his style no one has yet determined its 
value and durable quality. A genuine style 
never wearies; time, therefore, and many gen- 
erations of readers must settle this question. 
Tastes change as much and as often in literature 
as in other things and with surprising rapidity 
in our time ; yet there is something, we will not 
even call it taste, which does not change. It is 
that which is deeper, more permanent than taste, 
seated at the center of man's being in all ages. 
There is much in Emerson's mode of expression 

44 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

which of itself challenges attention. It has im- 
mense elevation ; it goes like a bird from one 
tree-top to another ; or as the gods talk around 
the Olympian peaks. It is almost too lofty; one 
gasps for a less rarified air and longs to touch 
the ground. With Emerson one never sees any- 
thing less than a vision, hears no voice but that 
of the soul; yes, and beyond that the Over vSoul. 
All is in the distance, a vast perspective lined 
with majestic figures of men and women as they 
would be if they but knew their own worth ; and 
at the end a lofty temple consecrated to the 
moral sentiments. 

In reading English Traits I cannot divest 
myself of the feeling that I am reading of a peo- 
ple much further removed than England and in 
no way related to our time and country ; they 
seem as distant and in truth as dead as Greeks 
or Romans, with such a cool, remote and con- 
templative pencil does he paint them. Is it his 
imagination that produces this effect or is it 

45 



Remembrances of Emerson 

that he sees things never before disclosed and 
hence the illusion of distance and nnfamiliarity ? 
The essential, national qualities are there, but 
abstracted in such a manner that they stand out 
like a scientific diagnosis; the diagnosis is so 
interesting and acute that the poor patient is 
forgotten. 

All of us in the days of our youth saw every- 
thing — as soon as Mr. Emerson had seen it for 
us. Our experience was precisely similar to his 
own with Montaigne. He says in one of the 
few revelations of his own intellectual history 
that when he first read Montaigne he felt as if he 
had himself written the book. So we felt when 
we read Emerson and we had in hitn a precedent 
which we much relied upon and often quoted. 
Long afterward I heard a religious enthusiast say 
that if some one had not written the New Testa- 
ment he should, and I understood him through a 
similar feeling regarding other books. Often as 
this happens to the sympathetic reader in later 

46 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

life, nothing can outwear the memory of the 
first youthful experience of it, and very dear to 
the heart is the volume and venerated the writer 
at whose fires we have lighted our own little 
torch. There was in all this seeming compre- 
hension the usual amount of self-deception and 
illusion, Emerson shot many an arrow beyond 
our ken ; some of which perhaps it may require 
several ages to overtake ; but we beheld the 
superb flight and thought we could see the 
mark, for youth is both confident and credulous. 
This faith kept and still keeps some of us steady 
in our allegiance to the Emersonian insights. 
Having found an interpretation for some of our 
aspirations we expected to arrive at all in due 
time. We believed in Emerson's discoveries, if 
you will, in his obscurities, and in whatever we 
could put into his writing out of our own 
thought. This belongs to the writer who has 
stirred us as much as what he has actually writ- 
ten belongs to him. It is his by virtue of that 

47 



Remembrances of Emerson 

first g-erm which originates others and still 
others in a countless series. A good book is a 
book plus a good reader. Find what you may 
and own your debt, pay it and say as Emerson 
said to his children when they asked him if he 
believed that Shakespeare meant what they 
found to praise in a certain sentence : "I think 
an author (or artist) has a right to anything 
g"ood that another can find in his work." All 
the interpretations and implications are his as 
much as the limbs are the tree's and the twigs, 
leaves, blossoms and fruits are the limb's. 

We thought with Gautier that " Genius is al- 
ways right; whatever it invents exists." We 
listened to whatever Emerson said with a certain 
haunting expectation seldom disappointed ; and 
it must be confessed for a time we narrowed our 
world by having no ear for any one else ; so 
that we appreciated keenly the witticism of a 
gentleman who, arriving just too late to hear 
Emerson's famous Phi Beta Kappa oration at 

48 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

Cambridge, in 1837, remarked that it was better 
to miss Emerson than to hear anybody else, 

Emerson has been a liberal education and 
emancipation to a large number of men and 
women for nearly two generations. One can 
only conjecture whether young men and women 
today are reading him with the enthusiasm of 
those who read forty years ago and under a cer- 
tain ban which made it the more intoxicating. 
For some time pavSt Emerson has been in fash- 
ion. It is doubtful whether an author who is in 
vogue has after all so deep an influence as one 
who has gained the concentrated and almost 
passionate devotion of a few readers. Ah, the 
critics will say, this is the conceit of the obscure 
and unrecognised. But I reply for their comfort 
and enlightenment that this very narrow and 
ardent following is the cause of the enlargement 
of the writer's circle and is the way of a slow 
yet triumphant progress to an immortality of 
fame. It is certainly true that Emerson was once 

49 



Remembrances of Emerson 

considered dangerous reading ; that we who fol- 
lowed him suffered contempt from some, re- 
proach and suspicion from nearly all, and that 
we are now justified and compensated. It was 
a situation for which the liberality of modern 
opinion can furnish no parallel, there being but 
one reason at present for consigning a writer to 
the Index Expurgatorius, namely, the taint of 
flagrant immorality. Old beliefs have been so 
rent by a succession of iconoclasts, have been 
so assaulted by the progress of scientific discov- 
ery that they have lost their dogmatic assertive- 
ness and are no longer intolerant of innovations 
in thought and custom. 

I have said that readers of poetry were especial- 
ly prepared for welcoming Emerson's writings, 
the earliest of which were in prose. Poetry 
emancipates young men from their inward 
and outward limitations; it opens to them an 
ideal world and attaches them to truth and 
beauty. More than this, it quickens the latent 

50 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

intellectual life by putting into choice phrase 
and melodious sound much which they imagine 
themselves to have felt, thought and already 
lived through. It certifies and establishes 
a relation between their own incipient con- 
sciousness and that of the matured mind, and 
lays the foundations of culture. Emerson's 
prOvSe is much like poetry ; it wants but the wide 
margins and capital letters. It has all the sur- 
prises of good verse ; it is rhythmical, episodical, 
sometimes austere, again homely or graceful 
and nearly always suggestive. He is thinking 
over what you have thought ; such is his insinu- 
ating, flattering address. He seems to whisper 
'lam merely the organ; the idea is yours.' 
The temptation then was great among young 
men to try to find expression for themselves ; 
it turned out to be merely repetition for the 
time; not only the thought but the language 
was unapproachable. The trade-mark could 
not be erased and another substituted. How- 

51 



Remembrances of Emerson 

ever, Mr. Lowell sufficiently satirised the imita- 
tors of Emerson. It is curious to remember now 
that Emerson himself was arraigned for an imi- 
tative style and even for borrowing his ideas. 
But who has not been ? Plato was ; and those who 
have not been are not remembered. " The 
greatest genius is the most indebted man." 
An aptitude for assimilation is one form of 
genius, often mistaken for imitation and plagiar- 
ism b}^ those who forget that there is and can be 
no more material than there ever was and that 
art alone endures : 

' ' The bust outlasts the throne, 
The coin Tiberius." 

Emerson's poetry was more difficult to imitate 
than his prose ; yet they are so essentially alike 
in tone and thought that whoever admires one 
will be apt to appreciate the other. It is safe 
to say that nearly all the young men who took 
Emerson for a master, themselves either wrote 
or soon began to write poetry. Here a man 

52 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

finds his true level ; he may be equal to intelli- 
gent reading and complete appreciation of poetry, 
but when he attempts to produce it he may 
find himself truly empty. He discovers that 
his effort no more resembles the self which 
seemed to be actively present when he was read- 
ing the work of the creative imagination than 
letters formed with his left hand resemble his 
most careless right-handed autograph. This 
also was a discipline for which we were much 
indebted to Emerson. Many paths must be tried 
and many must be abandoned ere one finds him- 
self. Some of the Emersonian disciples have 
struggled on with the Muse and have added to 
the music of the world; most became silent 
when they entered into active life. 

His verse rarely touches the common elements 
of the poetic domain; it has little warmth, no 
sensuousness, no passion ; but it does have 
wisdom, reflection, beautiful perceptions, clear, 
chaste and often perfect expression, stanzas and 

53 



Remembrances of Emerson 

lines that cling in the memory with the sweetest 
and best. When I say little warmth I mean in 
comparison with the more popular orders of 
poetry which celebrate the domestic affections, 
sufferings and joys, the nursery, the grave, the 
raptures of lovers with the attendant tragedy 
and comedy of passion. But I am reminded by 
a friend, and a more competent judge than my- 
self, that Emerson's poems have " sun-heat." 
That description pleases me more than my own, 
and every reader will be able to compute for 
himself the distinctions between "sun-heat" 
and its innumerable substitutes. His poems 
repeat a great deal that is in the Essays in an- 
other form. Emerson's taste for the poetry of 
other poets was just a trifle peculiar; he loved 
what we all love and a little beside. I believe 
he was fond of some books of poetry for other 
things than their poetry. One good word some- 
times was sufficient to attract him. He gave a 
generous welcome to everything which called 

54 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

itself verse. This indeed was his noblest intel- 
lectual trait, his magnanimous recognition of the 
work of others and his open, liberal praise and 
faith in it. And I think no one ever came into 
personal contact with him without a new or 
renewed confidence in his own possibilities. 

In his selection of poetry entitled " Parnas- 
sus ' ' there seems on a cursory glance nothing 
very distinctive; but reading more carefully 
one finds here and there the strangest and most 
unexpected evidences of his poetical proclivities. 
I recall an epigram on this feature of the 
collection : 

" Some bards are here and some are not, 

Either unknown or else forgot; 

And some are here elsewhere unknown 

Save to themselves and Emerson. 

But with the immortals do not class us 
For an idle houfon Mount Parnassus." 

The books a man likes are of a piece with 
his general sympathies. Emerson was a wide, 
miscellaneous reader and had an eagle eye for 

55 



Remembrances of Emerson 

what pleased him and made it his own. His 
quotations are as striking as the text. When 
was a line of poetry hitherto almost unknown 
more aptly chosen and set in such royal position 
as that one which closes the Essay on Montaigne ? 

"If my bark sink 'tis to another sea." 

It has been quoted a hundred times since, not 
once before ; I have seen it used even as a prose 
sentence. His quotations incited one to good 
reading since they could only be duplicated in 
the best books of all ages and countries. Com- 
ing to them you found that Emerson had often 
appropriated the only gem. Since both he and 
Thoreau found close at hand much that was ad- 
mirable, the great in the little, the universe in 
the Concord microcosm, it became the fashion 
among the Transcendentalists to hunt for the 
obscure and unrecognised, and to proclaim a dis- 
covery. I know not how many great but un- 
known geniuses arrived and departed each year 
at Concord. Young men came from all parts of 

56 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

the world and those who could not come wrote ! 
We who were nearer made frequent pilgrim- 
ages alone or in companies. He received us 
each and all with his unfailing suavity and 
deference. His manner toward young men was 
wonderfully flattering ; it was a manner I know 
no word for but expectancy ; as if the world- 
problem was now finally to be solved and we 
were the beardless CEdipuses for whom he had 
been faithfully waiting. Bursting with things 
we had locked up in our bosoms and which we 
thought it would be so easy to say, silence and 
vacuity benumbed us on arriving in the presence 
of the poet and prophet. His magnanimous 
spirit soothed and reassured us ; and to the little 
we brought he added a full store, inserting, 
as I have said, a silver cup in our coarse sacks 
of common grain, so that we returned to our 
brethren with gladness and praise. Yet what 
disappointments he must have suffered. What 
trials of patience and hospitality. What self- 

57 



Remembrances of Emerson 

restraints in the visits of friendly though fatal 
*' devastators of the day." ^ 

" To try our valor fortune sends a foe; 
To try our equanimity a friend." 

He bore all with a gentle serenity and doubt- 
less extracted from fools and bores some wise or 
witty thought. The nearest he ever came to 
dismissing a visitor was when a strenuous Mil- 
lerite called and attempted to win Emerson to 
his belief. Urging that the world was surely 
about to come to an end, Emerson replied, 
"Well, let it go; we can get on just as well 
without it." 

Yes, he could do very well without it and 
must often have done so. At death he entered 
upon no uncertain experiment. To our ques- 
tion, what shall we do without him? let himself 
answer : ' ' Great men exist that there may be 
greater men." 

' He once protested against an introduction saying, "Whom 
God hath put asunder let no man }oin together." 

58 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

I have always wished to explain the influence 
of Emerson on the young men of my time ; and 
since his active life covered the period which 
was without dispute an intellectual, political and 
religious crisis I may be permitted to include in 
it some account of the attitude and experiences 
of my youthful contemporaries, too immature for 
actual participation in affairs or the expression 
of themselves in writing. They were in the 
plastic stage, tormented by spirits of discon- 
tent and fascinated by visions of high ideals of 
life. They were like a flock of birds which a 
gun has startled from an old haunt and who 
hover uncertain, perplexed where next to alight. 
I was myself one of such a flock and I remember 
well the gun and the flash which frightened us 
and scattered us, some to Emerson, some to 
Theodore Parker, others ^to Garrison and Fou- 
rier ; while many, perhaps most, returned in a 
little while to their former associations ; yet who 
can doubt never to be quite what they were 

59 



Remembrances of Emerson 

before. A few reacted so violently as to entrench 
themselves only more firmly in the absolutism 
and finality of the existing institutions — the 
Bible as interpreted by the doctors of theology ; 
the Constitution as expounded by Webster and 
Taney and Calhoun, and they reasserted the 
claims of the literature of the last two centuries. 
The clocks of the churches had run down. 
They no longer struck the present hour; the 
hands were fixed motionless on time past and 
spent. We wended our way to the Sunday serv- 
ice full of doubts and returned more and more 
confirmed in them. Its devil, its hell, its Jews 
were the constant parable of our own sinful na- 
tures ; and out of this indiscriminate indictment 
but one single path was shown from the fall of 
man to his salvation. Ever the path of salva- 
tion for man is narrow, and it is a lone and soli- 
tary one. There is no crowd there, driven by 
fears or promises and marshalled by banners 
with a single inscription — ' this world or the 

60 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

other.' I remember the weight of human de- 
pravity was summed up in that vague term so 
constantly on the lips of preachers, ' the world.' 
Listening to them I associated it with something 
monstrous, forbidden and as fearful as the dark- 
ness and hobgoblins are to childhood. As the 
concrete is ever the characteristic of childish 
imagination, I at first supposed it was some 
place beyond the Mendon Hills, which then 
bounded my horizon. Had the preacher been 
there? How did he dare? Had it any real 
existence, this 'world' of the pulpit? It was 
painted in deepest colors and so overdrawn that 
like Milton's Satan I felt more interest in it than 
in the saints and their heaven. I had a great 
curiosity, inspired by the emphasis on the word 
and its all too attractive description, to see it 
for myself. As a seeker after this glittering, 
seductive iniquity for many years I have never 
been able to find it in that absolute and pure 
estate postulated. Such of its forbidden fruit 

6i 



Remembrances of Emerson 

as I have plucked I have found tolerably sweet 
and wholesome and but little more than a con- 
venient figure of speech for the exhorter, 

Emerson had walked out of church with the 
utmost gentleness and deference and established 
his tabernacle by the Concord wayside. There 
without noise or violence he continued to preach 
the word which liberated me and my contem- 
poraries from our spiritual bondage and resolved 
our negations into affirmations. For the faith 
that was in us we employed no logic ; we made 
when necessary a new affirmation. Thus with- 
out revolution or turmoil a force came into the 
world which ere it was aware had undermined 
the ancient New England error. There was a 
little controversy, and those who kept the shew- 
bread of Unitarianism at Cambridge, were at 
first startled into an exclamation which sounded 
like * atheism ; ' but it subsided slowly and it is 
now a long time silent. Atheism was the first 
alarm sounded and as usual came from the seats 

62 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

of learning — those seats where men sit too long 
and softly. This fearful word was next sof- 
tened into pantheism, then to German mysticism, 
Neo-Platonism, and many other epithets were 
experimented with by clerical and literary re- 
viewers, until it was finally mellowed into 
Transcendentalism, where their bewildered pens 
found rest. The Unitarian clergy were and 
have always been a company of cultivated 
men, rather independent thinkers, and already 
without the pale of canonical churches, it was 
easy for them to take a forward step. One 
by one they and their followers accepted Em- 
erson as the prophet of a new spirit in reli- 
gion ; prophet also of a new insight into nature, 
into history, into conduct and the poet of the 
ideal in all human relations and activities. 
Whether the Emersonian insights and ideals 
were altogether new and original is immaterial. 
From everlasting to everlasting, truth and beau- 
ty exist the same. They do become dull and 

63 



Remembrances of Emerson 

trite by reiteration in a traditional language and 
require from time to time a fresh statement. 
This Emerson gave us in a rich and striking 
form, unencumbered by prolixity, logic or au- 
thorities. He took the shorter way to men's 
minds — the road of the self-illuminated spirit 
speaking to the highest in other selves. Many 
voices in no long time echoed his messages and 
continue in these days their response from the 
pulpit and the press. I meet his sentences or 
verses as the mottoes of books, on calendars and 
Farmers' Almanacs, in private, marginal anno- 
tations and especially in all the strange assort- 
ment of publications of the seekers after new 
light in psychology, metaphysics, science and 
socialism. On a sentence from Emerson's writ- 
ings they issue uniformed and provisioned to 
found a new sect or school. It must be admitted 
that Emerson's sentences separated from their 
fellows readily lend themselves to every sort 
of propaganda. It is the fate of all inspired 

64 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

utterance founded on what is deepest and most 
universal in experience. But the critique and 
corrective are in other sentences; for Emerson 
never allows a too literal application of his orac- 
ular utterances. Although he has wings with 
which to soar he loves also to plant his feet firm- 
ly upon the earth. I dare say it would have 
alarmed him had any body of men attempted to 
organise into civil or religious compact his more 
advanced ideas. He wished rather to see the 
whole of mankind moved forward and upward 
to higher ideals through the integrity of the in- 
dividual and not drawn apart into coteries of one 
idea. He did not like the responsibilities of a 
founder of beliefs. He would have been the 
first to escape from his own fold, so jealous was 
he of his freedom of thought, the possibilities 
of the morrow and the dangers of consistent 
conservatism when one has joined or formed a 
party or creed. Growth ends with the birth 
of creeds. Advance is then too often accounted 

65 



Remembrances of Emerson 

heresy. In his lifetime, pilgrims from all 
quarters of the earth sought him out, having 
read in his books something of which they 
claimed themselves to be the discoverers or 
apostles. For this they laid hands upon him, 
demanding sympathy and — a subscription, I 
believe they usually got both, but no more. He 
remained Emerson, not a Come-outer, Sweden- 
borgian, or Fourierite. We who were young 
and without crotchets or affiliations went to him 
in quite another way and with quite other pur- 
poses ; and I am happy in knowing that he liked 
us better than any other class of visitors, even 
those who were themselves famous.^ 

It is true that many young men of my time 
had broken with the churches of their fathers 
and mothers. They had undergone the Sun- 

' I think you say rightly that he liked the young pilgrims 
better, though youth includes many persons over three score 
and ten. But of the young he liked the young in years best if 
they had bloom, the ideal and courage. — Note by Edward 
Waldo Emerson. 

66 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

day-schools, family prayers and revivals, yet 
obstinately remained unconverted. They were 
more or less consciously seeking some other 
way, very ignorantly, blindly and helplessly. 
They were by no means iconoclasts or heretics ; 
yet they were called bad names. It hurt a 
little ; in some cases it darkened the road to suc- 
cess and prosperity. Quiet and independent 
paths are always open to him who prefers them 
or whom chance has forbidden the thronged 
thoroughfare. Nature which we had always 
loved and lived with now became doubly dear 
by Emerson's celebration of its meanings and 
symbols. We were more than ever convinced 
that the higher life could best be cultivated in 
the country, in retirement, and in humble occu- 
pations where it was not absolutely necessary to 
cheat and be cheated. Thus were scattered over 
the rural parts of New England, and no doubt 
in other portions of the land, a few men and 
many women who were and continue to be 

67 



Remembrances of Emerson 

examples of plain living and high thinking, 
the impulse toward which came originally 
through the teaching of Emerson. Such models 
of domestic simplicity united with noble in- 
terests and purposes I have met in the homes 
of some friends, where to abide a guest was to 
be in a temple consecrated to the Muses and 
the Graces. In this retirement some attempted 
to cultivate literature, and I venture the asser- 
tion that more of it has sprung from the im- 
pulse of that early awakening than from any 
other source. 

Here are some sentences from one of Emerson's 
earlier addresses, " Man the Reformer," deliv- 
ered in 1 84 1, which illustrate his views and 
which had great influence in turning the thoughts 
of his hearers and readers toward a reform in 
ways of living. 

* ' Our life as we lead it is common and mean ; 
some of those offices and functions for which 
we were mainly created are grown so rare in 

68 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

society that the memory of them is only kept 
alive in old books and in dim traditions. 

" I will not dissemble my hope that each per- 
son whom I address has felt his own call to cast 
aside all evil customs, timidities and limitations 
and to be in his place a free and helpful man. 

" The manual labor of society ought to be 
shared among all the members. A man should 
have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. 
We must have a basis for our higher accomplish- 
ments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and 
philosophy in the work of our hands. Manual 
labor is the study of the external world. The 
advantages of riches remains with him who pro- 
cured them, not with the heir. When I go into 
my garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel 
such an exhilaration and health that I discover 
that I have been defrauding myself all this time 
in letting others do for me what I should have 
done with my own hands. 

" I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of 
69 



Remembrances of Emerson 

labor or insist that every man should be a farm- 
er any more than that every man should be a 
lexicographer. But the doctrine of the farm is 
merely this, that every man ought to stand in 
primary relations with the work of the world, 
ought to do it himself and not to suffer the acci- 
dents of his having a purse in his pocket or his 
having been bred to some dishonorable and in- 
jurious craft to sever him from those duties; 
and for this reason that labor is God's educa- 
tion. 

" I think if a man find in himself any strong 
bias to poetry, to art, to the contemplative life, 
drawing him to these things with a devotion 
incompatible with good husbandry that man 
ought to reckon early with himself and respect- 
ing the compensations of the universe ought to 
ransom himself from the duties of economy by 
a certain rigor and privation in his habits. For 
privileges so rare and grand let him not stint to 
pay a great tax. Let him be a cenobite, a pau- 

70 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

per, and if need be celibate also. Let him learn 
to eat his meals standing, and to relish the taste 
for fair water and black bread. He must live 
in a chamber and postpone his self-indulgence, 
forewarned and forearmed against that frequent 
misfortune of men of genius, the taste for lux- 
ury. 

' * Why needs any man be rich ? Why must 
he have horses, fine garments, handsome apart- 
ments, access to public houses and places of 
amusement? Only for want of thought. Give 
his mind a new image and he flees into a solitary 
garden or garret to enjoy it, and is richer with 
that dream than the fee of a county could make 
him. 

" Let us learn the meaning of economy. 
Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, 
when its aim is grand ; when it is the prudence 
of simple tastes, when it is practised for free- 
dom, or love or devotion. Much of the economy 
which we see in houses is of base origin and is 

71 



Remembrances of Emerson 

best kept out of sight. Parched corn eaten to- 
day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on 
Sunday is a baseness ; but parched corn and a 
house with one apartment that I may be free of 
all perturbations, that I may be serene and do- 
cile to what the mind shall speak and girt and 
road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge 
is frugality for gods and heroes. ' ' 

Emerson may have had a too masterful influ- 
ence at first over these awakened souls but 
through it they finally found their own genius 
and entering various paths with pen, with ledg- 
er, with sermon, in journalism, in teaching, in 
politics and law have everywhere uplifted our 
civilisation and given a higher tone to public 
opinion. There are idealists in the stock ex- 
change and on lonely New England farms whose 
pedigree can be traced to Concord. 

Wisdom it is said is good with an inheritance 
and some men begin with the latter for their first 
enterprise. How to interpose in everyday affairs 

72 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

the due admixture of philosophy, some ambro- 
sial salad with common bread and meat, is the 
problem of life. He who keeps in mind the 
precepts, and I may add, the practice of Emer- 
son, has some helps to that end. It is well to 
have been shown that while involved in the petty 
as in the most imperial employments of this life 
the soul can dwell apart. He is fortunate who 
can do this ; who does not need to separate him- 
self from the world to be no part of its triviali- 
ties and its boasted realities. 

Here I must record a sorrowful fact — the 
dilemma in which I and many of my compan- 
ions who wished to follow the Emersonian ideas 
found ourselves when it was necessary to choose 
some definite career in life. It was not the 
Choice of Hercules, the absolute good or evil, 
but one of subtle and over-refined discrimina- 
tions. We had learned only half of our lesson 
and bewildered by the current rejection of 
Emerson as a guide and obstructed on every 

73 



Remembrances of Emerson 

hand by the stiff conservatism of the times in 
religion, literature and politics there seemed to 
be no place for us. The half-digested lesson 
therefore impelled us to the thought of separa- 
tion and retirement. It would be easy we 
dreamed to follow ideals in solitude or in a spe- 
cially selected, congenial society. We could at 
least work with our hands, dividing the day be- 
tween labor and thought, and show the world 
the uselessness of church and state and riches. 
From these Arcadias and Utopias we were speed- 
ily driven, and compelled by the usual neces- 
sities of life, we drifted back into the common 
employments and conditions of our fellows and 
learned at length the other half of our wise les- 
son, namely, to live out the ideal amid our own 
affairs, however humble, and with the brethren 
of the common lot. I for one have been well 
satisfied to live without the American ambitions, 
in small, rustic communities, laboring sometimes 
with my hands and again with my pen in friend- 

74 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

ly obscurity. The voices and intimations of 
nature are not absent from such retreats, where 
also the records of the great spirits of literature 
can be gathered upon a few shelves ; nor are the 
affairs of the little community altogether with- 
out interest, which once a year are concentrated 
in that impressive public function, the Town 
Meeting.^ For this latter I have the greatest 
respect as the oldest and chiefest palladium of 
civilisation founded on freedom. There and 
there alone the citizen is a recognisable unit; 
elsewhere, mostly a cipher. One of the best les- 
sons I have learned from Emerson, and others 
before me have made the same confession, is to 
be faithful over a few things, beginning first 
with self. If more things do not follow it is no 
affair of ours. There is nothing so alluring to 

^ My Father delighted in town meetings; sat there humbly 
as an admiring learner, while the farmer, the shoemaker and 
the squire made all that he delighted to read of Demosthenes, 
of Cato, of Burke, as true in Concord as in ancient cities. Espe- 
cially was he pleased if he could carry in an Englishman to 
see. — E. W. Emerson in note to the writer. 

75 



Remembrances of Emerson 

most men as power and responsibility, but the 
ways to them are devious and largely in the 
hands of fortune. The slave is contented when 
unaware of his chains ; the free man in knowing 
his limits. A small stage for small men ; but 
life can be well lived even here, and for the 
greater — 

" I think not much of that or the less: 
I hear the roll of the ages. ' ' 

It was the same with the state and its tenden- 
cies as with the church. The bonds of tradition 
and an ancient superstition held fast the various 
religious orders of men. Slavery had paralysed 
the moral sense of the state. The mutterings 
of strife were in the air, confined as yet to a few 
angry remonstrants against the apparent apathy 
of the North. It was in the North dangerous to 
life and property to speak publicly against slav- 
ery ; in the South there were the tar-pot, the rifle 
and the jail on suspicion of Abolitionism. But 
on this subject there is abundant history. I 

76 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

wish to confine myself to the attitude of the hand- 
ful of 5''oung men who through the influence of 
Emerson had become emancipated from the con- 
servatism, the Whiggery and the dogmas of the 
times, who with the impetuosity of youth rushed 
into the other extreme of fanaticism, declaring 
war on their own account some years before Fort 
Sumter was fired upon. At the Phillips Academy, 
Andover, in 1853-54, among two hundred stu- 
dents there were only three of known anti-slavery 
sentiments. There Prof. Moses Stuart had 
shown the Bible authority for slavery; and 
Daniel Webster was the god of student idolatry. 
We three however stood fast by our colors in 
many a passionate argument in dormitory and 
campus; and when Anthony Burns was about 
to be returned to his chains from a Boston 
Court of Justice, we were on the point of march- 
ing our army of three to the rescue ; but alas, 
we had not a single gun. We consoled our- 
selves with composing speeches to be delivered 

77 



Remembrances of Emerson 

for the inspiration of the rescuing mob. One of 
these I well remember, stuffed with apostrophes 
to the goddess of liberty and recondite classical 
allusions. What a spectacle to gods and men 
that might have been if delivered as intended 
by the beardless stripling from the topmost step 
of the Boston Court House, adding that ridicu- 
lous element which sometimes makes tragedy 
more tragic. We were intensely serious and in 
earnest. However we remained in our cham- 
bers and I dare say found a new vigor and point 
in Cicero's Orations from the tremendous con- 
vulsion in our own bosoms. We studied now 
with a sort of fury and went about with the lean 
and hungry look of Cassius. In a spirit of ven- 
geance we felt called upon to put our pro-slav- 
ery classmates at the foot of the class if we could 
punish them in no other way ; and we succeeded 
— a scholastic and pedantic justice, which helped 
to cool our blood and which delights me to re- 
member and record. We made it most uncom- 

78 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

fortable for the little downy-bearded friends of 
the slaveholders at recitation, where we took 
especial pains to emphasize every liberal Cicero- 
nian sentiment and at the commons-table with 
g-ibe and satire we gave them no peace. We had 
all the fine sentiments concerning freedom at our 
tongues' ends, as well as all the pathetic stories 
of the cruelties of African slavery. It was the 
custom of one or other of the commons club 
officers to preside at the table and either to say 
grace himself or to call upon some other member. 
It happened on a day that one of the proscribed 
three who was not religiously inclined, presided 
and asked the blessing. He began, "O Lord, 
thou knowest the contented slave is a degraded 
man " — what farther he intended to say I know 
not ; there was a clatter of knives and forks and 
his grace came to a sudden ending. Silence and 
gloom overspread us during the remainder of 
breakfast and everybody felt ugly and ready for 
a fight. Thereafter only church members, that 

79 



Remembrances of Emerson 

is, those of the pro-slavery set, were allowed to 
say grace. 

In a few years more our numbers had sud- 
denly and immensely increased. To hold anti- 
slavery sentiments was no longer to be a marked 
man. Sumner had been struck down in the 
United States Senate by Preston Brooks, of 
South Carolina. We felt it was not a blow 
aimed at one man by another but by one-half the 
nation against the other half. The South hurled 
the bludgeon, the North received the blow. As 
early as 1 844 Emerson had very clearly announced 
his views on slavery; but I doubt if from the 
first he had held any other. It was not in his 
nature to be otherwise than a lover of human 
freedom.^ 

In 1856, after the attack upon Sumner, he 
delivered a short but impressive speech at an 

* One of the finest pieces of character in my Father's life 
seems to me his entering the lists with the black giant knight 
Webster, then the darling of the country, in the Free Soil cam- 
paign of 1856. — E. W. Emerson in note to the writer. 

80 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

indignation meeting of his fellow citizens in 
Concord. Then followed the great reception 
and procession in Boston in honor of Sumner 
upon his recovery and return to his home. The 
procession was led by the venerable Josiah Quin- 
cy. My companions and I were not far behind 
on foot carrying good, heavy walking sticks, not 
much unlike clubs, which we brandished about 
in defiance of an enemy as yet unchallenged. 
Our blood was up, our tongues wildly loosened, 
although there were none present to engage in 
discussion with us. They were converted or 
dumb. Even Andover, Cambridge and other 
seats of learning that had held the Biblical and 
Constitutional briefs for slavery drew back in 
fright and repentance. 

In 1859, John Brown was hung. No man or 
party could have been said at that time to lead 
the opinion of the North. It was all but unan- 
imous. The trial of Captain Brown aroused 
more antagonism against the South than years 



Remembrances of Emerson 

of anti-slavery agitation had been able to pro- 
duce. His speech on that occasion became a 
rallying cry, bringing into prominence once 
more the Scriptural teachings concerning self- 
sacrifice and the brotherhood of man ; and again 
we beheld the penalty of such words expiated 
upon a Virginia scaffold. During this stormy 
time Emerson appeared on the side of human- 
ity. He made two addresses on Captain Brown 
which are among his collected writings and they 
are the most impassioned words he ever deliv- 
ered. 

We younger men followed his lead with still 
greater ardor. We were for action. We wanted 
to rescue John Brown and offered our services for 
that purpose to certain persons whom we pri- 
vately heard were ready to lead us. The force 
was to consist of some three thousand picked 
men who were to rendezvous separately at Har- 
per's Ferry. More prudent counsels prevailed 
and we were left to nurse our wrath as best we 

82 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

could. The time soon came when there was 
ample scope for that wrath in a practicable direc- 
tion. The flower of New England youth went 
to the war and gave their lives for their faith. 
For four years they continued to fall on battle- 
field and in hospital. Those years lost their 
spring and their shadow still darkens and delays 
it. But war was better than peace at the price 
asked; as Emerson said at its outbreak " Some- 
times gunpowder smells good." If it left the 
plough in the furrow, it also broke up yardsticks 
and consumed selfishness in a flash ; overthrew 
mouldy conventions and made heroes out of pale 
students and dapper clerks. 

For all this Emerson's lectures, conversations 
and published writings had helped to blazon the 
way. Young men under his influence were pre- 
pared for any enterprise that would bring in a 
better day. They took sides with the ideal 
against the prevalent opinions, customs and man- 
ners and often at the sacrifice of worldly pros- 

83 



Remembrances of Emerson 

perity. They sometimes carried individualism to 
excess and became recluse or eccentric. Yet to 
sum up, there has been no one man in our land 
who has exerted so powerful an influence for 
spiritual, moral and intellectual advancement as 
Emerson, 

As a whole his ideas fortunately cannot be 
formulated into a philosophy or creed unless in- 
deed his constant tropes be taken literally, and it is 
too late for that ; we have just escaped the long 
reign of literalism and shall not soon put our necks 
under the yoke of Asiatic symbols. Yet Em- 
erson's views, ideal and impossible as they may 
seem to be, will serve a man very well when any of 
the real issues of life are to be met. There was 
never any question where those ideals would take 
Emerson himself, nor on which side he would 
be found when the opposing forces of freedom 
and slavery, of progress and conservatism should 
meet in peace or war. Some internal magnet, 
not to be deflected by public opinion, majorities, 

84 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

or popularity, pointed to the star of his hopes 
and convictions. I am impressed with the fact 
that he never made any mistakes throughout his 
career. He faced one way and continued to face 
that way. He never had to recant, to make a 
new start, to modify or apologise. Instead, he 
went forward with an even, undeviating step, 
applying his leading thought, namely, the im- 
portance of the individual, his identity with 
nature* and nature with itself, and above all in- 
sisting on the moral point of view through every 
subject that he discussed from his first word to 
his last. He presents the unique example of a 
man who continuously surrendered himself to 
the higher intuitions which he himself termed 
the Over Soul, meaning much the same thing 
as when the herdsman Amos wrote " God de- 
clareth unto man what is his thought." Unlike 
other moralists, religious teachers and prophets, 
who sometimes lapse into complaints or denun- 
ciation of human frailties, Emerson steadfastly 

85 



Remembrances of Emerson 

fixes his eyes upon the highest and recognises 
only the divine in man. The result upon the 
reader is a wonderful exaltation and desire to 
realise that ideal. I would emphasize again, 
that this, with the ever-present conviction and 
conclusion of all his writings, that there is a 
moral to be drawn from the natural world as well 
as from man's, makes him one of the great 
guides of life in a society now breaking away from 
ancient landmarks and filled with a thousand 
discordant demands for reorganisation. With 
Emerson on my shelves, I feel like saying as the 
doorkeeper of a rich house is instructed to say to 
mendicants and peddlars ' No, we have noth- 
ing to give — we want nothing.' But Emerson 
brings with him the best of goods and company 
and is not so exclusive that he cannot bear the 
presence of all the immortal books ever written. 
I chanced to read Emerson before I knew the 
others and have never ceased to be thankful that 
I had such a guide and such a light for the great 

86 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

masters of thought. In the various corners 
of my seaside and mountain castles — castles of 
one story — Emerson and his mates stand ; a 
rather ragged regiment, with some missing who 
should be there ; but I take care that only his 
equals shall be invited to share the shelves 
permanently. 

There is one other explanation of Emerson's 
influence over young men, somewhat closer and 
more personal, which I must attempt to examine, 
although I fear I may not be able to make it as 
clear as it lies in my own mind, inasmuch as it 
pertains to an inward crisis of life when it is 
passing from childhood to consciousness, diffi- 
cult to be communicated or understood unless 
already experienced. 

A boy's nature has a healthy imagination and 
spontaneous expression. It does not calculate 
consequences ; it looks not backward nor much 
into its future and is seldom introspective. If 
the boy declares he will be a sailor, a grocer or 

87 



Remembrances of Emerson 

a soldier, it is not because he has discovered in 
himself a special gift for those occupations, but 
because of the physical attractions with which 
he accredits them. So at first all of his attrac- 
tions and repulsions are of an outward, objective 
kind. Nothing as yet has appealed to his most 
inward nature with its faint, undefined longings. 
Slowly, or it may be suddenly, he awakens to 
the fact of his own personality, his ego, his 
independent being ; and he begins to note and 
measure its difference or sympathy with other 
beings. At this critical period it is of momentous 
consequence in w^hat direction he is drawn ; what 
influences, material or spiritual, are thrown into 
the delicate balance of his quickening tenden- 
cies. The new-found being, the exuberance of 
youth, UvSually draw men into self-enjoyment, 
into companionship and society and ambitions, 
and the integrity of the youthful, just awakened 
soul is dissipated and lost. It has had little 
chance or encouragement to keep hold of itself. 

88 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

On the contrary, it is discouraged ; uncomfortable 
epithets await it, egotism, peculiar, eccentric; 
and at one time or another it bears the name of 
some discredited person or institution. All 
voices counsel the young man to be like other 
people ; to conform, to keep step or to be left 
behind. 

At an opportune moment Emerson met the 
dawning consciousness and intelligence — and 
I doubt not continues to do so — of many young 
men when it must be confessed they were sur- 
charged with the exaggerations of self-impor- 
tance ; when their newly discovered powers were 
seething in indeterminate and nebulous disorder. 
He impressed the importance of a man to him- 
self and the necessity and dignity of self-reliance. 
Yet he directed this thought into such lofty 
meanings and implications as to effect the cure 
of egotism and pretension and open the percep- 
tions to the required preparation for self -trust 
and the incoming of higher life. Moreover, he 



Remembrances of Emerson 

held out the hope and the promise that only in 
being true to ourselves could we arrive at a real 
understanding of other men and discover our 
spiritual affinity with men as well as with na- 
ture, which is best worth knowing of anything 
in the world. 

This was a comfortable and elevated doctrine, 
which so released us from the obligation of try- 
ing to know and do the thing not in harmony 
with our own nature and its aspiration, so freed 
us from conformity and tradition that we eager- 
ly accepted it. If some were overzealous and 
carried the idea beyond its true scope they soon 
found the limitations, and within them have 
quietly worked out their own destiny. Wher- 
ever Emerson's teachings have found welcome 
among men they have been followed with saner 
living and nobler impulses. They have not 
been attended by organised institutions founded 
upon his name and writings, but as he wished 
have entered into the life and character of 

90 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

individuals, until the seed is now sown broad- 
cast and bears fruit after its kind in many se- 
questered as well as public places. We young 
men of Emerson's time, realising our own being 
and its potentialities, and yet uninstructed, were 
turning in all directions for help. Being in a 
certain sense delivered from the trammels of out- 
worn opinion, by our very aspirations which were 
prophetic of a new day, we found not this help in 
the writers of the past. Although the rules of 
conduct were at hand, where was the master who 
could lead us on, could fit himself to our special 
and personal need ; who could give us faith in a 
new thought and courage to follow it and capti- 
vate us by the form of its expression ? We found 
him in Emerson. Such was the deep impression 
he made, so profoundly did it move his readers 
that each knew immediately that this message 
was not for himself alone and at once was gener- 
ated that sympathy which prophesies of kindred 
spirits and in due time is united with them. 

91 



Remembrances of Emerson 

Thus it was we came into companionship and 
found our own. We formed no school but we 
did have a master. I see Emerson at our head, 
leading his extraordinary collection of boys; 
some over bold and opinionated, others facile and 
docile ; some with long locks, poetic and melan- 
choly ; others eager to apply literally and at once 
to all existing evils the Emersonian remedies. 
The master has hard work to keep us in order, 
but he allows a considerable latitude and idiosyn- 
crasy and is overflowing with confidence in our 
future. At last he leads us smiling to the seat of 
the Muses and introduces us as worthy of the 
palm, the oak, the olive or more humble parsley. 



By permission of the publishers of my Prose 
Idyls I add here in conclusion of these Remem- 
brances a condensed, symbolic rendering of 
them which was written in a moment of en- 
thusiasm when symbols and metaphors seemed 
best suited to shelter a personal experience. 

92 



Emerson's Influence on Young Men 

THE MIND CURER. 

It would be well, said the sage to me one 
day, to go to college ; it would be better to go 
around the world; but best of all to go look 
everything thou meetest with in the face and 
ask of it some question that is in thine own 
heart. If thou art patient, but withal importu- 
nate, then after many years thou wilt find the 
answers written everywhere, in a pre-Cadmean 
alphabet — such were his very words — overall 
waste places and in the dust under thy feet. 

Thus spoke the sage, and many other things of 
similar import, speaking like the Pythoness 
across the centuries, regardless of age, time 
and circumstances. 

As I had gone clandestinely, had hired a 
chaise and traveled twenty miles at the ex- 
pense of all my substance to consult the oracle, 
I held it to be mine and I treasured it up for 
many years without comprehending it. Yet 
generally I felt it like Socrates' demon, re- 

93 



Remembrances of Emierson 

straining me from many things. I know not 
how, but the lofty words and their very vague- 
ness elevated the soul and made it expectant of 
wonderful revelations. If I sought honor, ease, 
riches, love, something said, Seek them not! 
and at length they palled before a life, not 
mine, but whose existence I could divine. 
As the astronomer knows of an unseen star by 
the perturbations of some other visible, so I 
conjectured of a higher life by the agitations, 
the attractions and repulsions of this. 

Thus did the sage and the master of many 
centuries cure the uncertain adolescent mind 
ere yet it had reached to follies or prevented 
the entrance of wisdom. 



94 



Emerson as Essayist 



EMERSON AS ESSAYIST 

Emerson's Essays are the almost unexampled 
instance of matter prepared for oral delivery that 
has a place in permanent and vital literature. I 
know of no other compositions save his which 
have stood the test of reading in private equally 
well with the effect of public delivery. How cold 
and tame seem orations and addresses when read 
which were heard with thunders of applause. 
This is partly due to the temporary or occasion- 
al topic, or to a charm of voice and magnetism 
of the speaker which throw so illusive a glamour 
over the commonplace that it shall seem ex- 
traordinary and the trivial important. Each 
generation reads with disappointment the great- 
est efforts of oratory of a previous one. 

Here lies the point which distinguished Emer- 
son from other speakers. His topics were sel- 
dom transient; they were the eternal ones of 

97 



Remembrances of Emerson 

life; and he had an original manner of treat- 
ment and the literary skill which have made 
the Essays a lasting addition to the instruction 
and elevation of mankind. Dealing as he did 
with the eternal principles of nature, his mind 
became charged with a cosmical force which he 
manifests in his vigorous style and in the pro- 
found treatment of his subjects. He penetrates 
to the essence of things and lays bare the secret 
operations of mind and matter. It is obvious 
such themes are neither gilded by the momentary 
enthusiasm accorded to the orator, nor can they 
be stripped of their imperishable qualities when 
read in print. In their subsequent revision for 
publication something perhaps was added, but 
more, I think, was struck out. The concise and 
close statement was made more concise and 
close ; the inadequate word or phrase gave place 
to the apposite. Conjunctions, adjuncts and ad- 
verbs disappeared. The metaphor was made 
simpler and stronger. The condensation was 



Emerson as Essayist 

extreme. I remember a sentence, if so it may 
be called, of only two words, and it is one of the 
most effective in the essay in which it occurs. 
He was fond of the elision of the letter i in that 
convenient. Protean pronoun, it; so that " 'tis " 
became a well known earmark in the Emersonian 
academe. I do not wonder at his cutting the 
word, one could almost wish the elision had been 
complete. 

■^ Emerson trimmed and pared his sentences to 
the last limit; and he left to the reader the 
pleasant task of supplying joints and hinges and 
of finding or making mortises for his nicely artic- 
ulated tenons. He uses a figure of speech 
where most writers would insert a logical dem- 
onstration, or argument or entreaty. As one 
reads it is equally convincing and a thousand 
times more agreeable ; but it is hard to keep the 
connections, especially where the page sparkles 
with epigrammatic sentences. He is never sat- 
isfied unless he attaches the concrete to the most 

99 



l.sfC. 



Remembrances of Emerson 

profound abstractions ; until like the dreams of 
the gods his visions and ideals are made real by- 
some natural image, some actual example./' 

After the lecture had been newly dressed, after 
the excisions, the compressions, the polish, the 
file, something remained less impersonal, less 
conventionally literary, special and academic 
than in other English essays. I think that I 
can still faintly detect the air of the lecture 
room ; the upturned faces, expecting the sentence 
which should cut clean, sound to the depths, 
soar to the heights, and which never disap- 
pointed that expectation. There yet lingers over 
the Essays the direct address, the hortatory, the 
call to me, to you, which makes them so excit- 
ing and so revolutionary. He uses the first per- 
son I a great deal ; and one reciprocates the 
high compliment by believing himself alone ad- 
dressed. It is like a personal interview.^ 

' It is not necessary to assent to everything he says — but 
all, even such as I, can understand enough to be moved to ador- 



Emerson as Essayist 

A veritable presence does vitalise Emerson's 
Essays ; it is a soul informed with thought, with 
beauty, with experience, observation and con- 
viction, speaking to the soul. It has drawn to 
itself what belonged to it, and cast out what did 
not. It dares to be true to itself in all subjects 
and always. It is as important to note the 
unvarying attitude of Emerson's mind as the par- 
ticular expression of it. We do not know what 
he may have to deliver, what surprises may be in 
store under any of his rubrics, but we do know 
that Emerson will be there. He is so self -con- 
sistent that never a doubt interferes with our 
certainty as to the position he will take on any 
public or moral or literary question.^ We know 

ation and worship of the true, the beautiful and good. — Rev. 
Samuel Ripley to Mary Moody Emerson in 1838. 

One person observed she durst not breathe scarcely during 
the whole lecture. Yet some were displeased and thought the 
influence he exerted not good. — Same to same, 1838. 

- In praising a letter of Sterling's Emerson said, "These 
were opinions (for which he did not care so much) but the 
tone was the man." 



Remembrances of Emerson 

that he could not take any other than he does. 
There never was any writer so forbidden by his 
own genius to wander outside of its own domain. 
He was almost imprisoned by it. In a hundred 
subjects and digressions there is a thread which 
binds all and cannot be lost. He is everywhere 
the same. Should a single page of Emerson be 
exhumed from the future ruins of modern libra- 
ries it would be enough to identify him and 
testify to his genius. 

Is it remarkable then that Emerson who was 
so one in all his work should have been so untir- 
ing a searcher after identity in the history of 
mankind, both outward and spiritual, and in the 
operations of nature ? He pursued this identity 
not perhaps with the philosophical intent of 
finding a first cause, or principle, which ends 
often in dogma and system ; but he was pleased, 
like a poet, with the oneness of things ; the cor- 
respondences between nature and man, between 
matter and spirit. He saw symbols, and saw 



Emerson as Essayist 

them as a never-ending and interchangeable 
order. He was not content with seeing likeness 
in one place, one time, or object, but always and 
everywhere. He gave the immanent spirit per- 
vading nature and man many names, the loftiest 
of which was the " Over Soul." It was his key 
with which he opened secret and obscure pas- 
sages to man and nature, and revealed them the 
same as the known and the familiar. It at once 
commanded a larger thought and advanced his 
hearers and readers into a new life. The first 
effect of it was practical ; that is, it enticed the 
hearer or reader into a desire for embodiment. 
I assert this although aware that it was an ideal 
life which was endeavored to be realised ; a life 
as yet without institutions to assist and protect 
it. The singular elevation of Emerson's vision 
enabled him to behold harmony, order and love ; 
those in a lower atmosphere who could not 
bear that high light, by his help, might yet 
catch glimpses of the good and fair; and here 

103 



Remembrances of Emerson 

and there some solitary youth attempted to con- 
form his living and thinking to the Concord 
oracles. For such youth Emerson had a great 
tenderness, a great sympathy and hope, believing 
as he did that ideas must realise themselves as 
surely as the acorn becomes an oak. 

Emerson was an optimist because he was first 
an idealist; that is, he believed in the triumph of 
thought over the evil and brute forces in the 
world. He made ' ' no account of objections 
which respect the actual state of the world at 
the present moment." " Put trust in ideas and 
not in circumstances." " It is the ground we do 
not tread upon that supports us." And I must 
repeat here the best saying of Emerson as illus- 
trative of his habitual irony toward all things of 
matter-of-fact and practical importance : ' * Ex- 
cuse me," he said to some friends when called 
away by the appearance of a load of wood in his 
yard, " we have to attend to these matters just 
as if they were real." 

104 



Emerson as Essayist 

Some foreign as well as some American crit- 
ics of Emerson are ignorant of his influence 
upon the actual life of the men and women who 
were reading him when he was at his prime and 
they were in the eager and impressionable stage 
of youth. Although it is Matthew Arnold who 
has so wisely said that poetry is a criticism of 
life ; who also notes its deep influence on read- 
ers of Wordsworth, forming the intellectual 
tendencies of many other poets and writers and 
having a subtle, far-reaching effect over litera- 
ture, society and even government; yet he 
seems not to be aware of the similar facts 
in regard to Emerson's poetry and prose. They 
are, it is true, not so conspicuous, but they are 
just as real. Perhaps more of the Emerson- 
ian seed fell into unprepared ground, into a 
younger civilisation, a more disturbed genera- 
tion than in the case of Wordsworth and Car- 
lyle, and displayed itself in more crude and 
eccentric forms. But his teaching must not be 

105 



Remembrances of Emerson 

measured by the foibles of some of its followers ; 
every noble tree has its parasitic growths, A 
tree that is large and vigorous enough can sus- 
tain a good many. Time will rectify this. 
Wordsworth's imitators, his weaker disciples, 
who thought simple themes and characters as 
worthy of poetry as great ones and yet were too 
unskilled to treat them greatly, have fallen into 
obscurity, and only those capable of holding aloft 
and passing on the light they have received, re- 
main and are remembered. It has been thus 
with every great teacher, every original force ; 
and so it will be with Emerson. 

When I consider Emerson from these points 
of vi^w I am impatient of merely literary criti- 
cism of him. It does not compass his aims, his 
power and his effect. There is something in 
these you will not find when you only read Em- 
erson's books as literature. There is already 
history in them ; that is, what they contain of 
suggestion and aspiration has been more or less 

io6 



Emerson as Essayist 

successfully put into the life of this age. Wheth- 
er this will continue to be their fortune is an 
unimportant and also unanswerable question. 
In the history of most great men there has been 
at first a personal following, a band of disciples 
whose circle has extended itself in a natural 
manner. There happened to Emerson what 
usually happens to all eminent moral or literary 
leaders ; something calling itself the public be- 
gan to criticise and sneer at those who were the 
earliest and warmest of Emerson's admirers, 
reproaching them with the intention of appropri- 
ating him exclusively to themselves, and with be- 
ing blinded by their closeness to him. Though 
late in discovering it, and in fact by no other means 
than the observation of his influence and fame 
among a small band, this public found out that 
there was an Emerson, a poet, essayist or philos- 
opher, they were not sure which. After this dis- 
covery the next step was in accordance with the 
most ancient precedents — mockery of the follower 

107 



Remembrances of Emerson 

and praise of the master. The public took 'its 
view and mainly its expression from the follow- 
er; but censured him as a mere satellite, from 
whom they pretended they would rescue the real 
Emerson and show that he belonged to a wider 
world than the Concord or other coterie. This 
was the position of those who slowly and grudg- 
ingly magnified Emerson in order to belittle 
such as had anticipated their discoveries. ' We 
claim Emerson for a larger banquet than yours — 
too large for you; go you to the foot of the 
table.' This is always said by those who come 
late to the feast. They accepted Emerson 
when he began to be famous, not before ; and 
they always found it more easy to satirise the 
Emersonians than to understand Emerson. 
This amused for awhile, and then it passed 
away. There are always brilliant wits who 
know how to present truth and its opposite in 
such close proximity that it is impossible to 
separate them, and only safe to cut the whole 

io8 



Emerson as Essayist 

away and build on another and simpler founda- 
tion. These wits wish to be thought to follow 
nobody; to stand as supreme critics and repre- 
sentative of the cosmopolitan mind. On the con- 
trary they remind one of rows of pins on a paper, 
all alike, very small heads and very sharp points. 
There is another class of critics who endeavor 
without prejudice to estimate Emerson as a 
writer and fix his place. Yet in forming their 
estimate they do not take into account his influ- 
ence, both personal and literary, over his con- 
temporaries, nor conceive how great was the 
spiritual awakening caused by his writings. I 
believe no one could know it who had not di- 
rectly fallen under its immediate power. This 
which makes Emerson so dear to some, also 
renders it difficult for those who are out of sym- 
pathy with his teachings to find any Emerson 
at all, any greatness, any power. Although not 
a professedly religious teacher, we can only com- 
pare his influence to that of one. He seldom 

109 



Remembrances of Emerson 

enters upon any piece of writing as a purely 
intellectual exercise. To follow him then from 
literary standpoints is to miss his message. 
Yet he was literary in the special sense of that 
term ; he never depreciated the place of the 
intellect, and often upheld it. He appears, how- 
ever, to have been very impatient of the merely 
academic manner and to have subordinated both 
literary art and intellectual processes to a spiritual 
vision, which was a natural gift in him, his gen- 
ius. He makes way for this always; his pen 
falters and the essay hesitates when this does not 
command him. He did not climb any height 
by the steps of fact and argument, but he alighted 
there on the height, and descends by familiar 
paths, by homely illustration, proverb, practical 
applications to life, inverting as it were the 
usual order of thinking. Sometimes he stays on 
the summits, passing from one to another, as the 
higher clouds touch in their flight only the loft- 
iest mountain peaks. All of Emerson's intrinsic 



Emerson as Essayist 

greatness and power seem to me to come from 
the commanding place from which he begins to 
discuss every subject in the Essays. In other 
writings, as biographies, annals and topics of 
the day, he measures men, nations, events and 
reforms by lifting them to the plane from whence 
in his more abstract compositions he is accus- 
tomed to take his flight. 

Emerson's method, his intellectual or philo- 
sophical or spiritual first principles are to be 
found at large in his writings, in the least as in 
the lengthiest. To every object in nature, to 
life, the mind applies itself to learn what it 
means. This meaning, idea or cause is more 
beautiful and of larger significance than the par- 
ticular example of it. The meaning of a flower 
as drawn out in a line or poem is more impress- 
ive than the flower; the source of electricity, if 
we could find it, would be more wonderful than 
its applications. The object too often confines 
our attention to itself ; but its idea has no limita- 



Remembrances of Emerson 

tions. The Essays of Emerson are an attempt 
to look into certain subjects singly; to give to 
each the whole mind and to receive in return 
the whole truth of each. The lines, the rela- 
tions between them you do not get from Emer- 
son in any capital generalisation ; it is found in- 
volved in the prevailing texture of every essay. 
Now this involved generalisation, never formal, 
but a sort of reappearing, flashing light, irregu- 
lar and always surprising, is the very essence of 
Emerson's genius. It is a clear light to some ; 
to others it is not clear at all. It is peculiar, it 
is individual. Drink deep or taste not the Em- 
ersonian Castalia. All his work is colored by 
his natural genius and character. It was novel 
to us who had received no education for his 
ideas or style. The Essays have all the quali- 
ties of new and original thinking and therefore 
were not immediately and originally acceptable. 
We have to learn how to read, how to accept 
and use such writing. That we have learned so 



Emerson as Essayist 

rapidly is due to the continuity of Emerson's 
work; to his frequent appearance before the 
public in lyceums and reform organisations; to 
the general steadiness of his character, so that 
in time it became well known for what he stood ; 
due also to his engaging manners, which sent 
every one to his books as soon as he had chanced 
to meet the man, and where the one soon inter- 
preted the other; these and some ridicule and 
denunciation exciting a certain curiosity to 
know the object of them, gave an earlier and 
wider fame to Emerson than has been tisual 
with writers who have dealt with high themes. 
However, I think there is something in the 
nature of illusion in the common tradition that 
great writers are not recognised in their own 
day. We flatter ourselves and measure the 
beginning by the end. It even makes us suspi- 
cious that no man can enjoy a great fame in his 
own lifetime, or immediately, and continue to 
have it thereafter. 

113 



Remembrances of Emerson 

Emerson found his place very early with a few 
readers in the United States, and with here and 
there one in Europe. It is now said by an 
English critic that Emerson has been accepted 
by our generation as one of its wise masters and 
that he does not stand in need of any interpreta- 
tion, that he is his own expositor. Then as 
usual there follow fifty pages of exposition. 

It is more than fifty years since the Essays 
were published; the first volume in 1841, the 
second in 1844. They contain what is most 
characteristic of Emerson and what in one form 
or another appears throughout all his subse- 
quent publications. I think they are more read 
than his other works, although in the beginning 
they had no sale in comparison with his later 
books. But when people began to read the 
Conduct of Life, English Traits, etc., they 
turned back to the Essays. Under whatever 
title his separate prose works appear, essays fit 
them best. Yet most of them were prepared for 

114 



Emerson as Essayist 

public delivery. Some profess to detect this in 
their style. I should never discover it had I 
not heard some of them and since been unable 
to forget the tones of voice, the manner and the 
total effect of the delivery. For it certainly can- 
not be discovered by any resemblances to writ- 
ing that we do know was prepared for public 
delivery, which has for its prevailing qualities 
nothing in the least like the qualities of Emer- 
son's page. 

The old lecture platform witnessed every sort 
of performance with an impartial eye. It lis- 
tened to eloquence, to nonsense and to thought; 
it was not greatly rnoved by any; it was, 
perhaps, made a little more eager for the next 
lecture, which might demolish the ideas of the 
last. The audiences had their favorites, usually 
the more eloquent speakers. But it is painful 
to recall and still more so to read what went 
under the name of eloquence in Emerson's day ; 
that which was selected for school-readers, 

115 



Remembrances of Emerson 

spouted by collegians and admired by every- 
body."^ I remember now with amusement the 
blank and confounded looks of three masters 
and two hundred boys when on declamation day 
I delivered the whole of Milton's Lycidas as my 
part in the exercises. The boys winked and 
screwed their faces, the masters shifted uneasily 
in their chairs, and I was too chagrined to lift 
up my head again for a week. I knew I had 
committed a horrible sin against all the gods of 
oratory, forensic and Fourth of July. 

Being so admired, eloquent writing was the 
fashion ; it crept into poetry. The last genera- 
tion of American poets was more often eloquent 
than poetic. The verses are sermon, oration or 

^ It is remarkable how the love, he in common with the 
imaginative and thoughtful students of his college days had 
for eighteenth century eloquence, always remained, and with 
what delight in reminiscence, often woefully disappointed 
when he found the passage, he told us of the college eloquence 
of his day, imitating the very tones of John Everitt and some 
of the southerners of his time. — E. W. Emerson in note to the 
writer. 

ii6 



Emerson as Essayist 

narrative with capital letters and rhymes. It 
was a barbarian taste, now relegated to politics. 
Its last echo was at the consecration of the bat- 
tle-field of Gettysburg, where a specimen of 
that kind of oratory was brought into striking 
comparison with a few words of thought inflamed 
by the heart, and every one who either heard or 
read them both felt that the days of the conven- 
tional oration had been numbered. It was the 
beginning of an intellectual era in our history. 

As we usually understand eloquence, it re- 
quires an occasion, when bodies of men are 
already excited and feel eloquently and create 
half the power of the orator himself. You can- 
not manufacture this opportunity; you cannot 
arise before an audience and excite the pre- 
possessions necessary to responsive feeling. But 
the moral nature in men and in a less degree the 
intellectual, are always a prepared audience. To 
this Emerson addressed himself; and he at 
length secured its attention. He offered to it 

117 



Remembrances of Emerson 

matter which, after having been illuminated by 
his voice and literary style, was of that force and 
beauty to instruct and delight as much when 
read as when heard. The essay was as good as 
when it was a lecture ; and to follow it one step 
farther, it still retained its characteristics when 
it took the form of poetry; for often Emerson's 
poetry repeats his prose. Nothing in Emerson 
is more plain than the unity of his work, and 
its similarity under whatever form or title. 
What he saw and so constantly reiterated as the 
secret of creation, the relation of nature to man, 
and of man to spirit he discovered in his own 
being. Identity of being, under diversity of 
form, was his constant text. Emerson is the 
supreme analogist of modern or ancient times. 
It is always the same, whether sketching the 
history of Concord or the intuitions of the soul. 
If there be any narrowness in his mind or fault 
in his expression it is the repetition of this ma- 
jestic idea. Yet how inevitable, how necessary, 

ii8 



Emerson as Essayist 

it is that men who are prophets of the soul, who 
have a vital message to deliver, should proclaim 
it at all times, one idea, one doctrine in mani- 
fold forms and in every shape that can appeal to 
the imagination or the intuitions of mankind. 

There was between the essay and lecture little 
to distinguish them save those things which be- 
longed to the physical presence of Emerson. A 
strong personality pervades the Essays. It pro- 
duces even yet something of the effect of the 
living accents. The effect of both was similar; 
it was not exactly enthusiasm which they elicited, 
but an inward excitation, almost a tumult in 
young and serious minds. They wished to 
realise these fine ideas ; they looked into nature 
with a new eye ; they retired more from society, 
left off going to church, having experienced 
religion; and their tastes in reading became 
wonderfully changed. They sought after books 
that contained thought. At that time most 
young men who wished to be writers were form- 

119 



Remembrances of Emerson 

ing themselves upon the " icily regular, splen- 
didly null ' ' periods of the Edinburgh Review- 
ers. The style of Emerson was captivating; or 
was it style ? I ask because some denied to him 
style and said that to call it so was to forget all 
precepts and precedents. I shall not enter into 
this, a question for the critics, since I have already 
taken the ground that the Essays have a higher 
quality than the merely literary. Something 
there was in the sentences, often in the words 
themselves, which captivated the ear; but ex- 
amined more nearly, it was the poetic or spiritual 
sense they conveyed. Emerson proceeds by a 
series of mental saltations. The connecting 
links of which most writers are studious and 
careful, he has the appearance of neglecting. 
The construction is asyndetic ; the sentences ap- 
proach but they do not touch. Commonplace 
and padding are omitted. One needs to take 
long breathings in reading the Essays, and 
make a fresh start at every new chapter. These 



Emerson as Essayist 

thoughts are precious pearls of translucent, self- 
contained light. Intermediate ideas are left out 
— left for the reader to discover; these are the 
work of the will, of the pen guided by examples 
and the desire not only to supply to men their 
ideas but to do all the necessary thinking about 
them, draw all the important deductions and 
leave no passage unfortified, in short, nothing 
for the reader to do. But Emerson's view of 
men was that they were wiser than they knew; 
that it was not necessary to feed them forever 
on milk and keep them in primer and pupilage. 
To reason, to explain, to persuade was condescen- 
sion, an implied superiority. As you appeal to 
them such you will find them. His doctrine of 
intuitions led him to address men as if they 
would respond intuitively to the truth; and he 
spoke to them always from a lofty ground.^ No 

' This is the more remarkable when one remembers that 
they were first read to audiences in country towns and prairie 
settlements as well as to half philistine audiences in cities. 
How well It worked, this taking people by their best handles 



121 



Remembrances of Emerson 

books take so much for granted in men, show 
such ingenuous confiding of inmost thought and 
assume that they are open to all that is great and 
beautiful as Emerson's. It was a magnificent 
compliment; it was the manner of kings and 
princes to each other. Where had he learned it ? 
In the royal company of the sages and saints of 
all lands, and in the heart of woman. 

One woman at least, Mary Moody Emerson, 
had an immense influence over him in the 
formation of his youthful conduct and ideals. 
She was a person who had the strongest convic- 
tions and the most courageous manner of ex- 
pressing them ; she neither argued nor per- 

I tried to illustrate in mj' memoir of my Father by the story 
of Ma'am Bemis who understood no word but got the lesson 
from the tone and attitude of the man — and wouldn't miss a 
lecture. The amazement and puzzling of Carlyle and Sterl- 
ing and others in England as to what kind of an audience 
such things could be addressed to and find a response is al- 
ways very amusing to me, as is also the question what they 
would have made out of a Lowell, or Prairie du Chien, or 
Harvard (Mass.) audience if they had been present. — E. W. 
Emerson in note to the writer. 



Emerson as Essayist 

suaded, but affirmed and insisted and laid her 
high commands upon her young nephew with 
the absoluteness and confidence of an inspired 
prophetess. Such she was, in truth. And if we 
are thankful for the existence of Emerson we 
must also be grateful that he had her for a guide 
and exemplar. He has himself acknowledged 
his indebtedness in these words : "It was the 
privilege of certain boys to have this immeasura- 
bly high standard indicated to their childhood ; 
a blessing which nothing else in education 
could supply." 

Here are some of the standards to which he 
refers: "Scorn trifles." "Lift your aims." 
" Do what you are afraid to do." " Sublimity 
of character must come from sublimity of mo- 
tive."^ 

He had anticipated the Cathode ray and looked 
into the hearts and heads of men. 

' See Emerson's sketch of Miss Emerson ; also the poem 
" The Nun's Aspiration." 

123 



Remembrances of Emerson 

He modestly claimed only to have ' ' overheard 
things ' ' in the woods and fields. The same 
confession Thoreau makes in his verse : 

" Listening behind me for my wit." 

And we all had the same experience in the 
days of the Great Awakening ; we thought we 
overheard things in nature and in ourselves. 

A man who had such faith in humanity must 
have acquired it by finding in himself a quick 
perception of the best in others. He had learned 
it negatively also by observing on what a low 
plane men address each other, especially in 
religion and morals, referring everything to 
sources and supports outside of themselves. 
He taught self-reliance and led the way. He 
believed in the guidance of the intuitions, and 
that errors and inconsistencies which might be 
sometimes the consequence of this belief were 
from the very nature of their origin self-correc- 
tive. It was Burns's paradox — 

124 



Emerson as Essayist 

" the light that led astray 
Was light from heaven." 

If Emerson, too, never falters in his good 
hopes for .sinners, how much more confidence 
must he have in the honest, self-reliant search 
for the right way. Moreover, whatever way- 
ward, irregular and contradictory lines might 
mark the track of man through life, he believed 
they were rounded in by a circle whose center 
was love, never forfeited, and whose circumfer- 
ence was law, all-restraining. 

I gather from Emerson that the chief means 
to intuitions is right living ; keep the senses clear 
and unperverted ; see with your own eyes, hear 
with your own ears. Man is an imitative ani- 
mal commonly; catch him if you can when he 
is not and you will come nearer to his intrinsic 
nature. Man uses a vast quantity of paint and 
wears many garments in the effort to unite him- 
self to his kind. We learn our lessons together; 
first in the family, then at school, then in 

125 



Remembrances of Emerson 

society. Try to pierce through all this, whose 
prime object is to do what has been done and to 
know what is known, and wherein it is fatal 
for the soul to rest. Seek to advance through 
this elementary state, which is only preparatory 
and defensive, like the cocoon, but in which the 
wings never can expand. Advance, and be a 
person, and add something to life. If there be 
anywhere another person he can help you ; even 
his record is a help. What the poets and wise 
men have sung and pictured, that be. Do not 
let ideals rest in the realms of fancy. Ideals are 
the prophetic shadows of the real, or the hal- 
lowed memories of what has been, of what may 
be again if believed in and aspired after. The 
thing you think of, dream of and never give up 
will come to pass, because it is not yourself 
alone that desires and believes; it is a great 
moving stream that has caught you in its cur- 
rents and bears upon its bosom the gifts you 
seek. 

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Emerson as Essayist 

Emerson states in many forms the ideal and 
spiritual laws of life. Like a wise doctor, he 
has left us many directions on lesser matters ; 
how to come into true insights, how to employ 
them, how to preserve them, and how to recog- 
nise them in others. On this latter point he is 
very full and emphatic. The benefit of human 
intercourse is in the desire and effort to listen 
for the higher voice in men ; if possible to draw 
it out, to challenge it, to show^ it courtesy 
and honor; "to converse and to know," as 
Plato said. Emerson's voice at first was solitary 
and remote, the voice of one crying in the wil- 
derness. His first essay, the little volume en- 
titled Nature, although in prose, is pure poetry, 
and is as unlike the literature of the time as the 
Vedas, At length having attained to speak the 
thoughts of his more thoughtful contemporaries, 
he received from them many additions and illus- 
trations which wonderfully enlarged the circle 
of his vision. 

127 



Remembrances of Emerson 

I have in previous pages described his per- 
sonal manner toward a guest or friend as that of 
expectation. It was very- provocative. Rarely 
before had one been so encouraged to speak his 
inmost thought ; rather the effect of human in- 
tercourse had been to silence it and substitute 
what other men were thinking. My compan- 
ions and myself felt that our education thus far 
was mere absorption of lifeless knowledge. 
The fruit of Emerson's receptive attitude toward 
his contemporaries, and I may say, toward all 
the intellectual legacies of the past appears in 
the Essays. They are rich in wisdom, old as 
time ; enriched and refreshened with contribu- 
tions such as every new age furnishes, over- 
looked by the serene and penetrating eye of 
genius. 

It is not easy to draw lines through the Es- 
says, or to classify his ideas. Emerson's mind 
w^as excursive ; and if there be one definition 
more than another that fits the vague title of 

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Emerson as Essayist 

essay, it is perhaps excursive. As Lowell said 
of Theodore Parker's sermons — 

" His hearers can't tell you Sunday beforehand 
If in that day's discourse you'll be Bibled or Koraned," 

SO in the Essays of Emerson you are not sure 
what ideas you will meet under the titles of 
History, Self-Reliance, Wealth, Circles, etc. 
It is one of their charms, the surprises. I sup- 
pose the professors of English would not teach 
their pupils to write in that manner. They 
would instruct them to cogitate connections and 
logical order. Emerson's page is often oracular 
and epigrammatic. The wisdom of the ancients 
as it has come down to us seems fragmentary, 
as if something had dropped out ; in Emerson 
it appears voluntarily left out. But what can be 
said after an epigram? Nothing but another 
epigram. Anything else seems tame and dull. 
You are lifted up, and then you fall. Oh, for a 
glimpse of those links which mankind persists 
in believing make a chain. Emerson wrote 

129 



Remembrances of Emerson 

from the imagination, from remembered gleams 
and visits of a spiritual vision ; and it is said 
largely from note books containing miscellane- 
ous thoughts. To give form to these, to make 
an integral structure was not possible without a 
constructive faculty. There is a place for every- 
thing in a drama, an epic or novel. A construc- 
tive mind resolves its materials. Emerson got 
together vast collections, singly beautiful and 
valuable ; and some he happily wrought into 
fair and perfect forms. The remainder he gen- 
erously left for us to assort as we could. 

It is well known how Goethe's collections 
overflowed, beyond his creative power ; how he 
built a roof over some — a mere shed for stor- 
age ; and others he thrust into various previously 
completed houses, all for temporary convenience 
and lodgment. Emerson appears to me some- 
times like a rich famxily with magnificent furni- 
ture, but with no house in which to display it. 
He was apt to move it about from one place to 

130 



Emerson as Essayist 

another, from one lecture to another, then into 
the essay; and some precious pieces he left 
standing alone, like statues, with only the light 
of heaven for their protection, wonderful sen- 
tences, quite self-substantial, yet how much 
more impressive in some noble temple. I have 
often wished that Emerson had left off preach- 
ing and had created a work of art that would 
have itself preached. In reading him I cannot 
admire variously enough ; there is not sufficient 
opportunity for beholding beauty, form, pro- 
portion in the organisation of his materials. 
They are too abstract, too absolute. We long for 
some embracing, concrete form; for embodi- 
ment, for incarnation, so that through his mouth 
should have spoken a hundred men and women. 
Am I asking for a mine when I already have 
more jewels than I can wear? Yes, it is true; 
it is true that when we find greatness in a man 
it creates an appetite for the greater. 

There are certain of Emerson's earlier Essays 
131 



Remembrances of Emerson 

which when I read I feel myself an auditor in a 
vast temple, with one voice resounding, distant 
and solemn, and calling upon me to be a god. 
Or, it is as if in Hamlet or Prometheus none but 
Hamlet and Prometheus should speak. The 
splendid sentences exhilarate and fill me with a 
dazzling sense of my own possibilities, I read 
one and a second, and at the third I am intoxi- 
cated and pack my trunk at once for Utopia. 
Emerson mingles no water in his wine. His 
great soul never condescended to qualify, to 
concede, to write down. It is difficult to maintain 
the elevation so easy to attain while reading 
Emerson's page. The moment we leave it 
there is danger of a tumble. Therefore a wise 
and moderate morsel at one time is best. Like 
our prayers, we should come to it in the right 
mood ; then there will be a response of more 
lasting effect. 

The study of the Essays is an excellent prepa- 
ration for reading the masterpieces of all litera- 

132 



Emerson as Essayist 

tures. He opens the mind to them, and prepares 
it for greatness of every kind. In particular his 
admiration of the noble actions of men, whether 
real or those imagined by poets and dramatists, 
is inspiring and contagious. He was the liter- 
ary as well as spiritual magician of his time. 
He had a sure scent for the excellent in every 
department of man's activities; in biographies, 
in wars, in science, in poetry. The mere 
enumeration of the names of great men and of 
heroic deeds is to us when young very enkin- 
dling ; and Emerson was fond of repeating long 
lists of these in an allusive and attractive way. 
In fact, it was rather the fashion among the 
original Transcendentalists. It was the same in 
regard to all famous books. I suppose there is 
no studious reader whose first impulse on hear- 
ing of one is not to procure and read it immedi- 
ately ; and we must credit Emerson with promot- 
ing the taste for the best literature and improv- 
ing the whole literary tone of the country. 

133 



Remembrances of Emerson 

This, however, was only a minor and incidental 
effect of his writing ; but it served to keep the 
somewhat sublimated thought and spiritual air 
of the time from becoming unhealthy and nar- 
row. 

It seems sometimes as though Emerson in 
the Essays had set out to distil the essence of 
libraries into a page ; pages into a sentence ; 
the sentence into a phrase, the phrase to a 
word. This design, this intellectual habit is 
the very opposite of the creative and constructive 
mind. Perhaps some sentences from Joubert, 
a French writer of Pens^es, whose name belongs 
in a literary classification with those of La 
Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere and Vauvenargues, 
will best describe one feature of Emerson as a 
writer. These sentences are from a chapter 
entitled by Joubert, "The author painted by 
himself." 

" It is my province to sow, but not to build 
or found." 

134 



Emerson as Essayist 

" I am like an Aeolian harp that gives out 
certain fine tones but executes no air." 

" It will be said that I speak with sublety. 
This is sometimes the sole means of penetrating 
that the intellect has in its power; and this may- 
arise from the nature of the truth to which it 
would attain, or from that of the opinions, or of 
the ignorance through which it is reduced pain- 
fully to open for itself a way. ' ' 

" It is not my periods that I polish but my 
ideas. I pause until the drop of light of which 
I stand in need is formed and falls from my 
pen." 

This last expression seems to define not only 
Emerson's literary habit but also his waiting 
upon the moment of inspiration. His will was 
exercised in the work of preparing himself for 
this moment, in making his windows clear and 
leaving open his doors. His attitude toward 
his own mind and perceptions was distinctly 
religious. " Our thought is a pious reception," 

135 



Remembrances of Emerson 

he says. The god of thought, the Muse, will 
enter if you are not too impatient, if you will 
not stand in your own light, if you do not wrap 
yourself in creeds and customs. " Ideas come 
when it pleases them, not when it pleases me," 
said Rousseau. Emerson taught this as literary 
ethics, and the Essays are an example of the 
fruits of its practice. He listened for the still 
small voice, supposed hitherto to speak only in 
Hebrew and Greek and from Asia. He an- 
nounced that it could be heard in America and 
today, and that it now spoke English. Its chief 
difficulty for us is that it continues to be small 
and still, while we want the large and explosive. 
I have said that Emerson constantly incul- 
cates right living as the means to intellectual 
and spiritual insights. Perhaps one-half of the 
Essays concerns the statement of what form his 
highest ideals of life ; and the other half of the 
conduct necessary to realise them. In the latter 
he descends to many particulars, and shows that 

136 



Emerson as Essayist 

common sense and shrewd, homely wisdom for 
which he has been much praised. It made some 
of his later Essays almost popular. They were 
even commended in Boston and New York, and 
by such reputable citizens as Messrs. Hard and 
Long Head. " Our daughters, sir, have under- 
stood you for a long time back; but we have 
never paid much attention until lately ; now we 
begin to find you comprehensible ; a good Yan- 
kee, too, and we hear you are a man of some 
property and of a first-rate family." True, we 
are never allowed to forget that Emerson was 
descended from seven New England ministers, 
while the remnant of us and our ancestors kept 
shop or raised corn ; yet such was the force and 
circumstance of New England blood that how- 
ever ethereal it became it was never quite alien- 
ated from the counter and the farm, or how- 
ever earthy yet it had its transcendental moods. 
And what pleases the heart of the bourgeois 
most is that Emerson took care of his property 

137 



Remembrances of Emerson 

and increased it. He was no crazy poet or re- 
former, living in the woods or an attic, or worse, 
upon his friends. One is allowed to preach al- 
most any kind of destructive or lofty notions in 
New England, provided he do it behind a re- 
spectable life, a house, a lineage, a black coat 
and bank stock. 

But let us see what were Emerson's maxims, 
to be gathered from the Essays, for the life 
requisite to procure intellectual light and the 
power to communicate it to other men. Respect 
the senses, the avenues of much knowledge; 
there is an inevitable contest whether the body 
shall possess the soul, or the soul the body; man 
must know and command the inclinations of 
each. Live with nature as much as possible; it 
corrects the social life. Follow your instincts. 
Write ' whim ' over your lintel, to humor the 
world ; but do not believe it to be such yourself. 
Do not conform, nor make laborious effort to 
be consistent ; expect to be misunderstood for 

138 



Emerson as Essayist 

awhile. " Break up the tiresome old heavens " 
— here I quote one of his best quotations — which 
expresses the effort of every master and the un- 
spoken heart of youth. Eat, drink temperately; 
use indulgencies and luxuries moderately ; taste 
the cup, do not drain it; smoke half a cigar. 
One end of it is stimulating and social, the other 
is narcotic and silencing. Gratify, but not like 
the beasts, your special appetites and inclina- 
tions — even pie was made to be eaten. " Let 
the divine part be upward, and the region of the 
beast below." You cannot always drive out the 
devil at will and at once ; but make no bargains 
with him. Do not argue, but affirm; the argu- 
ment may be sound but the higher reason is 
sounder. Sleep much ; we are born again in 
solid sleep, and dreams teach us something. 
Use the morning hour. Prize the transient 
illuminations of your own mind, and " thoughts 
of things which thoughts but tenderly touch." 
Do not be ambitious of gain or place. Love the 

139 



Remembrances of Emerson 

spot where you are, and the friends God has 
given, and be sure to expect everything good of 
them. Keep the mind open and the heart sin- 
cere. These things do and you may wait hope- 
fully for the god of intuitions in yourself, and 
hear him more clearly in your fellow beings. 
For intuition is not that narrow doctrine of 
hearing only what God says to you, but the pres- 
ence of God when he communicates himself 
through any human being. 

The daemon in man, as described by Emerson, 
is a more active, energising and versatile spirit 
than that of Socrates, which was only restrain- 
ing. Emerson's is the last fru.it of the spirit of 
Christianity and the general wisdom of ancient 
and modern ages, affirming that there is some- 
thing divine and immortal in man, and that it 
has a voice both corrective and suggestive, heard 
not once for all, or mediately, but always and 
by each person for himself. He is the only 
ancient or modern writer who continuously and 

140 



Emerson as Essayist 

with emphasis has taught this doctrine without 
attaching to it some article of external faith, or 
building upon it a system of formal philosophy. 
His contribution to our faith, the enlargement 
and purifying of it, is in the direction of ethics ; 
and to philosophy in the observation of the 
working of his own mind. 

The question often recurs whether what Emer- 
son observed in himself and delivered with such 
confidence is true for all men. Time will sift 
and discriminate his work. Happily there are 
ever those who anticipate the verdict of time. 
His manner was oracular, and he affirmed more 
than he denied. Idealist and optimist as he 
was, his affirmations are in their nature incom- 
plete ; but they are dearest to the heart of man, 
the best guide, the end toward which we strive, 
Good and Beauty. Keep the eye fixed upon 
them and we grow into their likeness. His 
highest act of faith was in believing that evil 
had no real existence. In evolution the strong- 

141 



Remembrances of Emerson 

est survive ; in morals the best ; in beauty the 
most beautiful. Culture is the means to this 
end in the individual. Consoling doctrine, 
but requiring an almost godlike repose and 
elevation. 

The Essay is not one of the grand forms of 
literature ; the content is all that can give to it 
value or beauty. It is a plain roof, covering, it 
may be, emptiness or magnificent properties. 
Its brevity is convenient. It is a way of deliver- 
ing yourself when you do not know what else to 
do with what you have ; or possess no gift for 
invention or construction. In the essay you ex- 
periment; you fish in any water. Montaigne's 
net took in everything; Bacon's, only the larger 
game, suitable to set before princes and men of 
affairs. Emerson's style is like Bacon's in some 
respects; yet not so colorless and strained of 
personality; while on the other hand he is not 
so whimsical and not so discursive as Montaigne. 
In the essay you see what can be said, not what 

142 



Emerson as Essayist 

must be said in order that a final and prepared 
effect may be produced, as in the drama and 
novel. You draw around the topic from many- 
sources things associated in your own mind, not 
in the general mind and expectation. Embel- 
lishment and illustration are supplied by miscel- 
laneous reading ; but most of all it is a receptacle 
for those scattered observations of life, nature 
and experience which want a thread and would 
be lost if left singly and unset. Pins and nee- 
dles go to M^aste without a cushion. Prepare a 
place for things and things find it. Good writ- 
ers like good housekeepers can at length find a 
use for everything, and do save all. ■ 
y In the Essays, Emerson rarely writes on a 
temporary theme. One looks in vain to fix 
upon some points of departure and arrival, some 
immaturity and maturity, some youth and age, 
some greenness and ripening in his genius and 
productions. If these were in the man they do 
not appear in his work. He has no youthful 

143 



Remembrances of Emerson 

manner ; he began with the style and almost the 
grasp which he retained throughout. He began 
with great and well-worn subjects; he began 
with conciseness, with an imaginative treat- 
ment, with a style not formed on models or by 
practice ; but it seems like the transcript of a 
mind already long accustomed to a certain in- 
ward and silent expression of itself. This is 
why we feel it so near to our own experience ; it 
seems written out of the same. When he began 
to write and publish he left behind him the steps 
by which he had gained his position. As far as 
his message had importance, his style any 
charm, or his personality impressiveness, they 
were the same at first as at last. It is vain to 
complain of want of completeness, want of 
logic and connection ; he is what he is. We 
cannot say these are matters of indifference ; 
but we can say that a man must observe them 
no longer than they help him ; and that the 
greatest minds are superior to them, violate 

144 



Emerson as Essayist 

precedents and authorities and create the rules 
by which they are to be read. " When what you 
read elevates your mind and fills you with noble 
aspirations, look for no other rule by which to 
judge the book ; it is good and is the work of a 
master-hand." 

A few sentences of unclassical Greek have 
moved and filled the world for eighteen centu- 
ries. Many of the favorite passages of literature 
will hardly bear analysis, and none are more 
easily burlesqued. Emerson was a careful com- 
poser ; but it would appear that it extended not 
much further than sentences; to make them 
short, and then make another. And so he adds 
thought to thought on the page. Their con- 
nection it has been wittily said, is to be found in 
God — what better place ! In the lecture-room 
he paid his audiences the compliment of appear- 
ing to think before them. Old Sojourner Truth 
once said to an anti-slavery convention before 
which she arose to speak, " You have come here 

145 



Remembrances of Emerson 

to hear what I am going to say; and I have 
come here for the same purpose." This was 
something the same feeling one had when 
Emerson arose, hesitated, seemed to be totally 
unprepared, to be fumbling for the right thing 
to say. Was this nature or art? It certainly 
was very exciting to a sympathetic audience and 
doubled the effect of his master strokes. These 
always announced themselves beforehand. It 
was like the flash of a cannon ; it was seen be- 
fore it was heard. 

In the Essays, a certain fine and noble spirit 
colors all that is there written. I have often 
felt it to be like the tone of his voice in the 
lecture-room, which commended everything it 
delivered. Whatever passages or verse of other 
writers he introduced seemed more beautiful 
than in their own place. As was said of the 
Rev. J. S. Buckminster, a former famous Bos- 
ton clergyman, when it was his turn to read the 
contributions of a certain literary club of that 

146 



Emerson as Essayist 

city — "when Buckminster reads all the com- 
pOvSitions are good." 

Emerson was a scholar in the general sense of 
that title, although he made no additions to any- 
special department. But he upheld the scholar's 
vocation, and celebrated it much in prose and 
verse. His appreciation of the vStudies of other 
men in all fields of knowledge was generous and 
quick. In the form in which he chose to ex- 
press himself, the essay, it was easy and fitting 
to embody by illustration and reference the 
results of the labors of others, and to take up 
the interesting fragments of special studies. He 
detected these, the universal element in particu- 
lar discoveries, the gems of wisdom and wit, by 
an infallible instinct. His mind held an anti- 
dote to specialism, and yet was its best exponent. 
His prophetic imagination was coincident with 
some of the experimental revelations of modern 
science. The higher regions of science depend 
upon imagination as much as poetry and art 

147 



Remembrances of Emerson 

depend upon it. Every law must be felt before 
it is arrived at by the understanding and evi- 
dence ; that is its necessity. But undoubtedly 
you must be looking intently in its direction. 

Morals would be as appropriate a title for 
Emerson's Essays as for Plutarch's; the actual 
contents covered by it being similar, the search 
for the beautiful and the good. The title is 
only a little more loose and vague than the mat- 
ter. The essay shows a man's reading it is said ; 
but in what the essayist appropriates there is 
revealed the same characteristic as in that 
which is original. What he quotes is the same 
as what he invents. " Let them perish who 
have said the same things before." The points 
of light are refocused and sent forward again. 

There is room in essay writing to say what 
comes into the head ; but then there must be a 
head. Emerson read more than he studied, and 
thought more than he wrote, so that there is 
great compression and conciseness in the Essays. 

148 



Emerson as Essayist 

They are convenient to quote. I frequently see 
in the newspapers his phrases and even whole 
sentences uncredited. Thus always language 
and literature are fed involuntarily from higher 
springs. 

As on the platform Emerson seemed often 
to be searching for the right word or idea, 
almost admitting the hearer to his mental 
processes, so on the page of the Essay there is 
revealed the active principle of thought. He 
appears to leave out so much that he flatters 
us with the feeling that he is merely making 
memoranda for us to complete. He touched, 
but did not stay, on a thousand subjects ; but he 
left them illuminated; there are diamond-like 
gleams on the pages, concentrations of wit and 
wisdom, something for all moods and experi- 
ences. 

I think the obscurities, or what some complain 
of as a wa.it of cohesion and logical sequence in 
Emerson's Essays may be partly explained as 

149 



Remembrances of Emerson 

an impatience of the commonplace, of the 
smooth, facile style which turns itself round and 
round a subject, lingering over an idea until it 
is so comminuted that its force is lost. It covers 
the page, it does not fill it. There is no for- 
ward movement ; it begins but does not arrive. 
There are long pauses between Emerson's sen- 
tences. Their brilliance, their power and sug- 
gestion are often in these intervals. Ordinary- 
punctuation is inadequate for their indication. 
Stop, reader, and think; reflect as he is doing; 
let not the stimulated imagination be embar- 
rassed by the want of logic ; let it leap this bar- 
rier and know that the relations of things can 
often be more truly seen in the mind's illumina- 
tion than in that of rhetorical order. Emerson 
does not weary you with all that can be said in 
the spaces between his texts ; but after long 
thinking he writes another text — another bead 
on the string which when full will be hidden. 
Should it break or seem weak, no matter; the 

150 



Emerson as Essayist 

beads are the value, not the string. The verses 
of the Bible are as good out of it as in it. The 
brightest gems of all literatures are some oft- 
quoted sentences, lines, fragments of an enor- 
mous mass of material put together in structures 
that have nothing else save these to preserve 
them. 

In his way Emerson was a writer very careful 
about form and style. I have heard that when 
he turned a lecture into an essay, or prepared 
any piece of writing for publication, he called 
it giving it a Greek dress. It is Greek, but 
seldom of Athens; it is Spartan, Laconian. As 
Sparta only permitted poetry in war songs, so 
Emerson's is strictly confined to the moral. He 
knew that it was not enough to have good 
thoughts; that the gods must not be without 
suitable temples. He was conscious, like Plato, 
that writing is the grave of thought ; that in the 
attempt at expression it becomes sometimes 
altogether illusive, flat and nothing; while 

151 



Remembrances of Emerson 

before the pen is taken in hand it allures us 
with the most beautiful hopes. ^ Let us then put 
thought to the test; and what by ever intend- 
ing, repeated effort will not take perfect form, 
let us reject. Emerson observed these prin- 
ciples of literary art, not in grand forms but in 
the polish and elaboration of the separate parts. 
The Essays contain the harvests of Emerson's 
lifetime ; plain food for daily life, rare fruit and 
dainties for life's holidays. The quality is as the 
products of the sun's light and warmth; the 
form is spontaneous and simple, and everywhere 
expressive of the man. He wrote when he felt 
inspired ; when not, he sought in right living and 
high thinking the renewal of the sources of 
inspiration. 

* In a letter to Sterling, Emerson wrote, ' ' All thoughts are 
holy when they come floating up to us in magical newness 
from the hidden life, and 'tis no wonder we are enamored 
and love-sick with these until in our devotion to particular 
beauties and in our efforts at artificial disposition we lose 
somewhat of our universal sense and the sovereign eye of 
Proportion." 

152 



Emerson as Essayist 

The reserve of Emerson's Essays is one of 
their most notable and instructive characteristics. 
He sees more than he says. He is like a general 
overlooking the field of battle, determining the 
strategical points and concentrating his forces 
upon them. "What he does not heed is not im- 
portant for a comprehension and complete grasp 
of the situation. Some have complained that 
one might read the Essays as well backward as 
forward and with equal profit and understand- 
ing. Then read them so, I advise. Either way 
it is impossible to miss their message. The 
reserves of Emerson are a tribute to the reader. 
He does not put him to sleep with faultless but 
empty periods. He stirs him with sallies of 
thought or wit or expression. An index to his 
writings would probably fill as many volumes as 
the writings themselves. He has some good 
thought in terse and memorable phrase on every 
subject that interests humanity. The connec- 
tion may not be with each other ; look out for it 

153 



Remembrances of Emerson 

in your own thinking. The stars shine far apart, 
nor otherwise would their shining be so appar- 
ent and impressive ; yet who can doubt the in- 
terstellar spaces are also full of light and beauty ? 
So Emerson's sentences often rise on our skies, 
sometimes cold and glittering, sometimes warm 
and palpitating, yet always reminders of the 
infinite worlds beyond them, the worlds where 
the souls of men are one with the spirit of truth, 
of beauty and holiness. 



154 



